The crisis in sociological leisure studies and what to do about it BLACKSHAW, Tony Available from Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive (SHURA) at: http://shura.shu.ac.uk/8485/

This document is the author deposited version. You are advised to consult the publisher's version if you wish to cite from it. Published version BLACKSHAW, Tony (2014). The crisis in sociological leisure studies and what to do about it. Annals of Leisure Research, 17 (2), 127-144.

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Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive http://shura.shu.ac.uk Annals of Leisure Research

For Peer Review Only The Crisis in Sociolo gical Leisure Studies and What to Do about It

Journal: Annals of Leisure Research

Manuscript ID: RANZ-2014-0002.R2

Manuscript Type: Original Article

sociology, leisure theory, social inequality, methodology, sociological Keywords: hermeneutics, cultural intermediaries

URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 1 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

1 1 2 3 4 5 The Crisis in Sociological Leisure Studies and What to Do about It 6 7 8 9 10 In recent years, social philosophers such as Zygmunt Bauman, Agnes Heller, Jacques Rancière, Richard 11 12 Rorty and Peter Sloterdijk have generated tremendous excitement by offering some revolutionary and 13 14 radicalFor ways of thinking Peer about human lifeReview in the twenty-first century thatOnly present some fundamental 15 16 challenges to sociology as it is normally conducted. Responding to this trend, this article argues that we 17 18 need to not only fundamentally re-think what we mean by theory in the sociology of leisure but also how 19 20 we carry out research in leisure studies. The first part of the article argues that orthodox sociological 21 ‘Theory’ is dead and it offers some good reasons why this is so. It is subsequently argued that there is a 22 23 crisis in leisure theory which has its roots in the central tenets of sociology. Taking its cue from Jacques 24 25 Rancière’s classic study The Philosopher and His Poor the article develops the argument that if social 26 27 inequality was once upon a time the fundamental issue in the discursive formation known as the 28 29 sociology of leisure, today it urgently needs an alternative cognitive framework for thinking outside this 30 31 paradigm. In order to substantiate this critique the discussion considers two leading theoretical 32 33 perspectives in leisure studies: the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu and feminist sociology, and in particular 34 the emphasis currently placed on the idea of intersectionality. It is argued thereafter that sociologists of 35 36 leisure, and others who carry out research in leisure studies, generally have a particular activity in view: 37 38 methodological uniformity of both the employment of research methods and the philosophical study of 39 40 how, in practice, researchers go about their business. But there are some different ‘rules of method’ when 41 42 we engage in thinking sociologically after ‘Theory’. As will be demonstrated in the final part of the 43 44 article, analysis of this second kind of activity does not rely on the tools, epistemological frameworks and 45 ontological assumptions generally used to make sense of leisure. Instead it develops its own new ‘rules 46 47 of method’ which turn out to be radical, because they are not ‘rules of method’ at all. 48 49 50 51 Keywords: sociology; leisure theory; social inequality; methodology; sociological hermeneutics; cultural 52 53 intermediaries 54 55 56 57 Introduction 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 2 of 69

2 1 2 3 4 5 It seems to me unlikely that any important sociological theories of leisure will ever be written 6 7 again. Leisure ‘Theory’ is dead. Theory, that is to say, within the sense of theory as the 8 9 10 ‘founding fathers’ of sociology understood it. In the future, I can imagine Annals of Leisure 11 12 Research articles and even some special issues still devoted to sociological leisure ‘Theory’. 13 14 But these willFor invariably Peer represent flights Review into the past, package Onlytours to much-loved Arcadias 15 16 where sociology used to have some especially firm footholds: functionalism, Marxism, 17 18 19 symbolic interactionism, feminism and so on. As is usually the case at properly consoling 20 21 funerals, those writing these articles or responsible for putting the special issues together 22 23 won’t dream of dwelling on the deceased’s bad points, because they’ll no doubt be so carried 24 25 away by the eulogies that got them thinking about the resurrection in the first place— a bit of 26 27 nostalgia; those were the days. But nobody should be fooled by what people will be saying at 28 29 30 these wakes. Make no mistake about it, leisure ‘Theory’ is dead. 31 32 33 34 Personally, I see no reason to lament the passing of leisure ‘Theory’—the talent wasted on 35 36 theorizing contemporary sociological understandings of leisure should be used for the more 37 38 39 urgent task of theorizing contemporary leisure. It is, however, worthwhile enquiring why 40 41 leisure ‘Theory’ has become redundant; it may help us to both understand more closely the 42 43 sociology of leisure’s historical situation and begin to map out for it an alternative future. It is 44 45 to these two tasks that this article is in the main devoted. 46 47 48 49 50 The end of leisure ‘Theory’ 51 52 53 54 If I were asked to mark the moment when the decline of ‘Theory’ became inevitable in 55 56 leisure studies, by identifying the work of one sociologist, I would choose Chris Rojek. Of 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 3 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

3 1 2 3 the key sociologists in leisure studies, Rojek is an important standard bearer. In books such as 4 5 Decentring Leisure (1995) and The Labour of Leisure (2009), we are presented with a 6 7 sociology that registers no allegiances to ‘isms’ or any other signature gestures. His work 8 9 10 offers us not a ‘Theorist’s’ world of leisure but one in whose sociological evidence we can 11 12 believe. As both of these books demonstrate, increasingly from the last three decades of the 13 14 twentieth century,For in pursuingPeer their leisure Review interests, fewer and fewerOnly individuals have been 15 16 able to believe in the value of the social roles assigned to them at birth. If, in Rojek’s mid- 17 18 19 nineties mind, the postmodern imagination emerged as a new way to think and understand 20 21 how we engage with leisure in modernity, by the end of the noughties he was just as 22 23 persuasively arguing that what we call ‘leisure’ today is actually a form of social and cultural 24 25 life in which ‘work’ and ‘leisure’ often intersect and mutually inform one another. What 26 27 Rojek’s work demonstrates more than anybody else’s is that theory continues to prosper 28 29 30 when it challenges the intellectual attitude that once defined ‘Theory’. This is one good 31 32 answer to our original question about the decline of ‘Theory’ in leisure studies. 33 34 35 36 This answer implies, however, that sociological leisure studies are in rude health. But they 37 38 39 are not. To understand why, we must consider a second answer. Sociological leisure studies 40 41 are actually in a quiet but deep state of crisis. But what do I mean by crisis? To squeeze 42 43 together two defintions, the crisis of sociological leisure studies can be understood as a result 44 45 of a ‘legitimation crisis’ (Habermas 1975), reflected in the erosion of the explanatory basis of 46 47 previously important theoretical perspectives in sociology, which has led to an ‘organic 48 49 50 crisis’ of authority that ‘consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot 51 52 be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear’ (Gramsci 1971 p. 53 54 276). This crisis presents challenges that deliver some heavy blows to the discursive 55 56 formation, which despite being relatively new feels more like an ageing boxer staggering 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 4 of 69

4 1 2 3 with exhaustion in the final round of a championship fight, who still thinks he has the right 4 5 punches and combinations to win, but can’t see that this is more illusion than hit. These 6 7 challenges bring into question the tacit, invariant assumption of sociology that in order to 8 9 10 understand people’s leisure choices we need to put their social inequality at the forefront of 11 12 our analyses. In other words, sociology, in leisure studies, as elsewhere, is the very thought of 13 14 social inequalityFor (Rancière Peer 2004). This Reviewis the paradox that pervades Only the discursive formation, 15 16 for it is in the idea of social inequality that sociology assumes the ‘truth’ about our leisure is 17 18 19 located. It is also a paradox of this crisis that its roots are to be found in the circumstances 20 21 that originally gave rise to sociological leisure studies. 22 23 24 25 As is well known, in the 1970s the study of leisure was led away from its uncritical comfort 26 27 zone by bright young academics from disciplines as diverse as urban studies, geography, 28 29 30 history, social work, and especially sociology, attracted to a new field of study whose subject 31 32 burned brightly in their own free time, and who in due course not only produced a new 33 34 dynamic subject field which reflected the diversity of their own interests straddling theory, 35 36 policy and practice , but also a paradigm shift by bringing attention to social inequality as the 37 38 39 fundamental issue in the study of leisure. It is this second observation that alerts us to the 40 41 compelling influence that sociology was to have on this new interdisciplinary subject field. 42 43 Indeed, not only did sociology make a recognizable aspect of human life appear strange by 44 45 de-familiarizing the familiar, but it also provided the means to think differently about leisure 46 47 and its intimate relation to the often unfair (and ideological) functioning, organization and 48 49 50 development of society. In broad outline, then, a new, critical perspective of leisure was 51 52 established through a sociological analysis: patterns and configurations of leisure vary across 53 54 time and from society to society and culture to culture (Dumazadier 1974; Elias and Dunning 55 56 1969; de Grazia 1964; Roberts 1978; 1981), and leisure is transformed fundamentally by 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 5 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

5 1 2 3 modernity in general (Rojek 1985; 1995) and the depredations of industrial capitalism in 4 5 particular (Clarke and Critcher 1985). 6 7 8 9 10 Yet, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the crisis in the sociology of leisure has its 11 12 roots in the aftermath this paradigm shift. Although the necessity of bringing to attention 13 14 social inequalityFor in constraining Peer the freedom Review and reducing the abilityOnly of some people to take 15 16 up ‘leisure’ on their own terms was important 30 or 40 years ago, it has by now run its course 17 18 19 and is in need of an alternative vision. Why? By continuing to pose social inequality— 20 21 particularly though not exclusively of class, of gender, and of ethnicity—as the primary ‘fact’ 22 23 that needs to be explained with regard to people’s leisure, sociology has ended up explaining 24 25 its necessity (Rancière 2004). 26 27 28 29 30 This might appear a somewhat scandalous proposition; it is meant to be. As such, it demands 31 32 a critical discussion of some of the dominant standpoints in the sociology of leisure. Let us 33 34 consider two. On one hand there is the massive legacy of Bourdieu, the social theorist of 35 36 Distinction (Bourdieu 1984) , whose theories and concepts are some of the most regularly and 37 38 39 uncritically applied in leisure studies; on the other is feminist sociology, and in particular its 40 41 foregrounding of intersectionality in the current theoretical landscape in leisure studies 42 43 (Henderson 2013; Watson and Ratna 2011; Watson and Scraton 2013). Here my aim is to 44 45 simply give two illustrations of what happens to understandings of leisure when inequality is 46 47 presupposed. This is important to note, particularly with regard to feminist sociology of 48 49 50 leisure with its qualitative evidentiary bases and miscellany of theoretical argumentation. Of 51 52 course, it is important to remember that intersectionalities perspective must be understood as 53 54 just one of many developments in feminist sociology of leisure. But there is no getting away 55 56 from the fact that it is central to current feminist thinking in leisure studies and as such it 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 6 of 69

6 1 2 3 provides an ideal theoretical and methodological framework in terms of which one could 4 5 apply Rancière’s polemic and respond to it. 6 7 8 9 i 10 The sociologists of the leisure and ‘the poor’ 11 12 Bourdieu: the arbitrary as necessity 13 14 For Peer Review Only 15 16 17 Let us begin with Bourdieu. There is a paradox at the heart of his sociology: although it is 18 19 extremely critical of social inequality, its subjects have no social role in it other than to 20 21 perform this social inequality as they endure it as their life. As Rancière explains this leads to 22 23 ‘a theory of the necessary misrecognition of social relations as the very mechanism of their 24 25 26 reproduction’ (Swenson 2006: 642). This tautology is important for our purposes since it 27 28 clearly identifies the limits of Bourdieu’s sociology for understanding leisure. Not only is 29 30 social inequality built into the deep structure of Bourdieu’s sociology, but it also performs the 31 32 brilliant feat of making ‘the poor’ feel ennobled while confirming their extirpation from the 33 34 35 world of leisure choices (see for example Bourdieu’s magnus opus The weight of the world 36 37 (Bourdieu et al. 1999)). It isn’t that Bourdieu’s respect for ‘the poor’ isn’t genuine, it is 38 39 simply the case that his insights are not convincingly constituted of the different situations in 40 41 which social inequality occurs. In a nutshell, the great sociologist of reflexivity thinks that the 42 43 majority of ‘the poor’ do not have any time for leisure and he presumes that those who do of 44 45 46 being incapable of having any—well, any that doesn’t incite the kind of disapproving, 47 48 puritanical look made corporate by the Frankfurt School, whose ghost lives on in Bourdieu’s 49 50 sociology, grimly looking down and shaking its mocking head at those amongst ‘the poor’ 51 52 ‘aspiring to reranking [ reclassement ] through [their] feats in the great simile industry of the 53 54 55 new petty bourgeoisie: the manufacture of junk jewelry or sale of symbolic services; the 56 57 commerce of youth leaders, marriage counsellors, sex therapists, advertising executives, or 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 7 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

7 1 2 3 dieticians determined to create within people the symbolic need necessary for the 4 5 enlargement of their market, hence for the reconquest of their inheritance’ (Rancière 2004, 6 7 p.p. 192-193). 8 9 10 11 12 The limits of the leisure intersectionalities perspective and methodology 13 14 For Peer Review Only 15 16 Another version of this theme is replayed in the theoretical perspective and methodology 17 18 19 known as ‘intersectionality’ some feminists have adopted in leisure studies, which works on 20 21 the basis that social inequality in leisure is relational and has multiple dimensions. The clear, 22 23 rational logic of this perspective suggests that by taking into account the concept of ‘class’ 24 25 multiplied by ‘gender’ multiplied by ‘race’ and so on what is revealed is something even 26 27 more unequal. However, it never stops to consider, that in practice, an odd kind of polarizing 28 29 30 effect might just take place. Rather than amplifying each other, social inequalities multiplied 31 32 might just cancel each other out. A good example of this approach is Watson and Ratna’s 33 34 (2011) research in the UK. Their article claims that intersectionality offers us a way to move 35 36 beyond static interpretations of compound social inequality by taking into representations of 37 38 39 shifting, multi-layered social inequalities which are constructed across racialized, classed and 40 41 gendered social relations in particular leisure spaces. Yet Watson and Ratna’s account offers 42 43 very little that is concrete or geared to representing the social conditions under scrutiny. What 44 45 it does instead is lock the ostensibly multi-disadvantaged into a singular, self-contained 46 47 leisure world . In so doing, what it fails to recognize is that ‘the poor’, in common with most 48 49 50 other men and women in liquid modern societies (Bauman 2000), actually inhabit pluralized 51 52 worlds where there are different possibilities. In liquid modernity, everyone wears many hats 53 54 and inhabits many worlds. It is sociologists who wish to lock them into a single, 55 56 disadvantaged world. 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 8 of 69

8 1 2 3 4 5 Whereas those who theorize leisure by ‘thinking intersectionally’ see a singular world made 6 7 up of complex intersections of social inequality, there is another approach to thinking 8 9 10 sociology that sees worlds in the plural. This is a view that is not only critical of the 11 12 assumption that the theoretical world is the only horizon from which really existing realities 13 14 take their meaning,For but Peerone which argues Review that when we understand Only the world ( sic ) in the 15 16 plural, as the social philosopher Peter Sloterdijk does, ‘then there are different existential 17 18 19 possibilities, that is to say, difference itself becomes the unity into which life draws its 20 21 breath’ (Davis 2013, p.p. viii-ix). This view is confirmed by some research in leisure studies 22 23 which suggests that an individual may inhabit several different worlds at once and often 24 25 within an ordinary day (AUTHOR 2003; AUTHOR and AUTHOR 2004; AUTHOR 2013). It 26 27 is scarcely any longer possible (if it ever was) to explain really existing realities (or identities) 28 29 30 rationally as unfolding in time and space with any kind of fixity. 31 32 33 34 Let us explore this argument in a little more detail. Robert Musil, the great Austrian writer, 35 36 suggested 80 years ago (in his highly influential unfinished novel The Man Without 37 38 39 Qualities ) that what gives modern life its uniqueness in the absence of any sign of singularity 40 41 is the universal ability of men and women to exceed whatever identity they have been 42 43 allotted. In other words, we learn from Musil that ‘universal man can only be a man without 44 45 qualities, for a man without qualities is the only one who can possess any quality’ (Jonsson 46 47 2010: 117). That is, whilst there are many ways of becoming-in-the-world, all humans share 48 49 50 the meaning of what it means to be human—in other words all human beings have the sense 51 52 of an inevitable, universal, relation but with contingency attached to the individual form their 53 54 life will take. As Jonnson goes on to explain: 55 56 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 9 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

9 1 2 3 There is a slogan for this mode of universality as negativity: the right to difference. But 4 5 human beings possess no such ‘right’; rather, they practice such difference inseparably 6 7 from their life process. There are situations in which this negativity becomes 8 9 10 politicized, such as when an external power seeks to fix a person or a group in a certain 11 12 identity—as Jews, women, Muslims or youth—thus disavowing their capacity for 13 14 negativityFor (ibid: 117-118).Peer Review Only 15 16 17 Indeed, the satisfaction we find in our leisure is often the satisfaction of finding another 18 19 20 aspect of ourselves, which permits us to be somebody else and this has nothing to do with the 21 22 desire of external powers (such as sociologists) to recognize us ‘for who we really are’. 23 24 25 26 This observation leads to a further troubling aspect of intersectionality. This is the argument 27 28 29 that despite its adherents’ claims to the contrary, ‘thinking intersectionally’ does a double 30 31 disservice to ‘the poor’, by not only being resolutely determined to ‘give voice’ to the 32 33 conditions of the multiplicity of their subjugation, but also by judging ‘them’ as oppressed 34 35 creatures. As Rancière (2004) would say, in the kind of sociology promulgated by the 36 37 intersectionality perspective, there are no ‘thieves’, only ‘the possessors and the disposed’ . 38 39 40 One of the consequences of this is that in trying to understand leisure through relational and 41 42 multiple dimensions of inequality, the world of the research subjects under scrutiny is always 43 44 bound to remains partial to say the least, and if the intersectionality perspective is one that is 45 46 successful in giving voice, the only voices really heard are those of the sociologists. One of 47 48 49 the other consequences is that ‘thinking intersectionally’ has to nurture with its thought the 50 51 lives of its ‘subjects’; but in so doing it fails to grasp the fact that its monsters cannot be 52 53 tamed by bolting together objectified versions of their existence from intersections that never 54 55 quite cohere with one another. The overall effect is so full of its own virtuousness that it gives 56 57 the impression of showing little regard for its respondents, and the arch structuring the 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 10 of 69

10 1 2 3 sociology—with its inability to grasp the existential contingency of the individual lives at 4 5 stake in the commentary—renders the perspective critically inert. As that most discerning 6 7 critic of this social scientific fixation with turning subjectivity into objectivity and converting 8 9 10 people from subjects into objects of investigation, Jacques Derrida once put it, ‘One cannot 11 12 say: ‘Here are our monsters’’, without immediately turning the monsters into pets’ (1990, p. 13 14 80). For Peer Review Only 15 16 17 18 19 What is perhaps most problematic with ‘thinking intersectionally’, then, is that it ends up 20 21 overstating the significance of the relationship between difference and subjugation. This 22 23 constitutes the limit of a particular sort of sociology, for which true freedom is only that of 24 25 the sociologist, and which is conceivable and functions as the exact opposite of the ostensible 26 27 powerlessness of those who are subjugated. As Rancière would say, here sociology ends up 28 29 30 as the very thought of inequality because by posing social inequality as the primary fact that 31 32 needs to be explained it ends up explaining its necessity. 33 34 35 36 What ‘thinking intersectionally’ also does in this regard is deny the true interpretive role of 37 38 39 thinking sociologically since its conception of reflexivity (in common with Bourdieu’s), 40 41 foregrounds social inequality at the expense of understanding leisure worlds through the self- 42 43 understandings of social agents. Indeed, the awareness of what is lost, overlooked, and 44 45 distorted in the process of transforming people’s everyday worlds into sociology cannot help 46 47 but be missing from ‘thinking intersectionally’; and what it shares in common with 48 49 50 Bourdieu’s sociology, is the inability to escape the tendency to impose its own narrative order 51 52 on all kinds of untidiness—worst of all, the necessities of sociological ‘Theory’ above the 53 54 identification with and compassion for those whose worlds it claims to be explaining—while 55 56 failing miserably to reflect on the process by which that order has been achieved. 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 11 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

11 1 2 3 4 5 Rethinking social inequality and its relationship with leisure 6 7 8 9 10 The argument developed so far suggests that in sociological ‘Theory’ ‘the poor’ have to stay 11 12 in their place: on the hand, they have no time to go anywhere else because work won’t wait 13 14 for them, whichFor is an empiricalPeer fact; and Review on the other, their immovability Only rests on the belief 15 16 that ‘God mixed iron in their makeup while he mixed gold in the makeup of those who 17 18 19 destined to deal with the common good’ (Rancière 2009, p. 276). This second reason is not 20 21 an empirical fact, but it provides the alchemical myth (‘the story of the deity who mixes gold, 22 23 silver, or iron in the souls’) that underpins the ‘natural’ order of things and which sustains the 24 25 idea that ‘the poor’ have to remain in their assigned places. In other words, in order for 26 27 sociology to function it has to rest on the idea that the social divisions and the inequalities 28 29 30 emanating from these are performed by those who endure them ‘as their life, as what they 31 32 feel, and what they are aware of’ ( ibid ). To use one of Rancière’s analogies, the identity of 33 34 someone from ‘the ‘must fit like a handmade pair of shoes, but the type of shoe is never in 35 36 question. 37 38 39 40 41 Obviously, Rancière doesn’t think that ‘the poor’ actually believe that God mixed iron in 42 43 their souls and gold in the souls of those higher in the system of social stratification, but it is 44 45 enough that they sense it and as a result feel obliged, responsible and actively committed to 46 47 this idea as if it were true. In other words, for Rancière, social divisions are not only a 48 49 50 reflection of actually existing conditions of existence, but also the extent to which 51 52 sociologists believe that they are natural and inevitable. In Rancière’s scheme of things 53 54 ‘myth’ and ‘reality’ and ‘activity’ and ‘passivity’ are not opposed; just as a ‘reality’ always 55 56 goes along with ‘myth’, so ‘activity’ always goes along with ‘passivity’. In other words, for 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 12 of 69

12 1 2 3 Rancière, sociologists give their own meaning to the world through the patterns of hierarchy 4 5 and order which appear in their ‘Theories’ and which they help to create and sustain. 6 7 8 9 10 Rancière (2009) argues that what sociologists need to grasp is that actually existing reality 11 12 and the ability to transform it lies not in their theories or their research but in the collective 13 14 passion of Forindividuals. PeerWhat he also argues Review is that when the status Only quo of actually existing 15 16 reality is challenged, ‘a break of epistemology as the qualifying perceptual criterion for 17 18 19 political participation‘ (Panagia 2010, p. 98) takes place, which leads to a demand for a share, 20 21 a place, a part des san-part , in the social order by those who do not have one. To this extent, 22 23 Rancière understands politics as a form of disruption of the established order of things by 24 25 those who challenge their own invisibility, silence and unimportance within that order. Here 26 27 Rancière is not talking about the empowerment of a group that already has a subordinated 28 29 30 part or a place. Rather, that ‘politics is the emergence of a claim to enfranchisement by a 31 32 group that has been so radically excluded that its inclusion demands the transformation of the 33 34 rules of inclusion’ (Martin 2005, p. 39). What this suggests is that men and women acting 35 36 politically not only demand to be included in the world in ways that have previously not been 37 38 39 open to them, but that they are also intent on a total transformation of the ways in which they 40 41 are seen in this new ‘part’ or role—that is, they are after a radical transformation of 42 43 experience. In other words, in order for them to be included, the world has to be transformed 44 45 to accommodate them in different ways than it has done previously, and in order for the 46 47 world to be transformed, men and women acting politically need to conjure a different world. 48 49 50 This is where often leisure comes in. 51 52 53 54 The essential point I want to make here can be made by briefly discussing some of the 55 56 findings from my study of the ‘Inbetweeners’, the intermediary generation that provide the 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 13 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

13 1 2 3 focus of a life history interpretation of working-class life in northern England in the period 4 5 after the Second World War (AUTHOR 2013). Amongst other things, this study explores the 6 7 extent to which a generation of working-people found through their leisure interests and 8 9 10 activities the means to transform a world in which they had hitherto been predisposed to 11 12 remain invisible. As this study shows, through the life course this generation would re- 13 14 discover lifeFor as unintended Peer and contingent Review and they would as a resultOnly set about re-making 15 16 new worlds in their own image, and discovering also, by extension, that leisure is often 17 18 19 pivotal to these reconstructions. 20 21 22 23 What the evidence emerging from this study suggests is that when the balance of work and 24 25 leisure tilts over from the former to the latter, as it did for many working-people in England 26 27 in the post-war period, the distribution of iron and gold is disturbed. Indeed, by stealing ‘a 28 29 30 certain sort of gold, a sort of gold which is at once more and less precious than the gold 31 32 which is supposed to be mixed in the soul of the rulers’ (Rancière 2009), the Inbetweeners 33 34 were at the vanguard of the dawn of a new order of things in which leisure moved steadily 35 36 into its position as the principal driving force underpinning the human goal of satisfying its 37 38 39 hunger for meaning and its thirst for giving life a purpose (AUTHOR 2010). In other words, 40 41 what the findings of this study demonstrate is that leisure was key to understanding the 42 43 interruption of a tacitly accepted order of things by working-people who had hitherto been 44 45 invisible in it. The result was, as the evidence of the study demonstrates, in the post-war 46 47 period, that leisure as a certain kind of gold, instead of being out of the reach of most 48 49 50 working-people, began to take up a more central and radical place in their lives. 51 52 53 54 Interim summary 55 56 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 14 of 69

14 1 2 3 Amongst all the issues that emanate from the cognitive dissonance found in sociological 4 5 leisure studies discussed in the preceding section of this article, the following stand out. First 6 7 and foremost, the prevailing discourse underpinning some orthodox sociological accounts is 8 9 10 premised upon situating ‘the poor’ in a singular, self-contained leisure world . One of the 11 12 upshots of this is (as we saw with intersectionality), while it provides its adherents with a 13 14 vocabularyFor for analyzing Peer how social inequality Review in leisure is relational Only and has multiple 15 16 dimensions, it does this at the expense of understanding that all men and women today— 17 18 19 notwithstanding whether they are ‘the poor’ or not—inhabit pluralized worlds where there are 20 21 different possibilities for leisure. We also saw that such an outlook can lead to some 22 23 sociologists equipping ‘the poor’ with an excess of the most unattractive, but also most 24 25 necessary features of ‘people like them’—features that while purporting to ‘give them voice’ 26 27 actually turn them into monsters, or even worse still, pets, whose leisure interests incite the 28 29 30 kind of disapproving, puritanical look made universal by the Frankfurt School. 31 32 33 What is also clear from this discussion is that the discursive formation known as the 34 35 sociology of leisure has been too insular, too parochial, and too complacent in framing the 36 37 idea of its subject, and while many of the once bright young academics from the 1970s are 38 39 still around, the waves that they make nowadays seem much more modest. Beyond the odd 40 41 42 blue-moon gem from Rojek, the sociology of leisure seems to have reduced its ambitions to 43 44 the shrinking comfort-zone of coterie approval that is its key associations, conferences and 45 46 journals. Moreover, what is hardly debated in leisure studies is that the subject field has lost 47 48 its lustre. The study of leisure has by and large dropped off the curriculum at most 49 50 universities and most bright young postgraduates nowadays seem more attracted to subjects 51 52 53 like sport, criminology and cultural studies. The fundamental issue at stake here can be found 54 55 in the failure to incorporate into the sociology of leisure what has happened in social, 56 57 cultural, political and economic life over the last thirty or so years. 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 15 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

15 1 2 3 4 5 It is important to qualify something at this point. I am not suggesting for a moment that social 6 7 inequality is by now unimportant to leisure studies. That is not my argument. My argument is 8 9 10 that there is now an unacceptable gap between sociological accounts and quotidian leisure. 11 12 This gap has arisen as a result of the discursive formation’s anxious reluctance to let go of 13 14 the ‘zombieFor categories’—zombies Peer frighten Review us by being both dead Only and alive—associated with 15 16 orthodox sociology, which no longer have a compelling grip on reality. What I am talking 17 18 19 about in this regard are the zombie concepts associated with social inequality which have a 20 21 strange ghost like presence in the sociology of leisure, which still uses them as if they 22 23 represent something, including power; and to some extent they do still represent power. But 24 25 the social networks and patronage, the paddings of privilege and the stereotypes leftover 26 27 from modernity in its ‘solid’ phase do not carry the same power that they once did—even if 28 29 30 sociologists carry on ‘business as usual’. Breaking this spell is a game that sociologists of 31 32 leisure need to play if the discursive formation is to emerge from the current crisis. 33 34 35 36 So how to refresh the sociology of leisure in a way that thinks outside social inequality? The 37 38 39 first answer to this question must be that the explanations I have given for the decline of 40 41 sociological ‘Theory’ have implications which reach much further than just theory. Indeed, 42 43 the whole function of sociology is in question if we can no longer accept that it has the 44 45 authority to either lock individuals (no matter how ostensibly multi-disadvantaged) into a 46 47 single identity or to convince us that the theoretical world is the only horizon from which 48 49 50 human existence takes its meaning. What this suggests is that the sociology of leisure needs 51 52 some new ‘rules of method’. To understand why, we must consider yet another answer. 53 54 55 56 Towards an alternative sociology of leisure 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 16 of 69

16 1 2 3 Today we find ourselves living in a society at once strange and yet strangely familiar. It is 4 5 still far from being an equal one, which means that a democratic deficit continues to bedevil 6 7 the leisure opportunities of many. However, with the emergence of what Bauman (2000) calls 8 9 10 ‘liquid modernity’ there has been a shift from a structured and structuring society in which 11 12 our identities were largely predetermined by our social class, gender, ‘race’ and the like, to an 13 14 unstructuredFor and de-structuring Peer one in whichReview individualization dominatesOnly more than anything 15 16 else, and where our identities always remain a work in progress. Social class, gender and 17 18 19 ethnicity may still exert some degree of influence on our leisure lives, but they certainly do 20 21 not dictate them. There are many reasons why this is so, but it is still difficult to define this 22 23 change briefly. But what individualization involves, fundamentally, is the change, as 24 25 Raymond Williams once observed, from unaware alignment to active commitment, or in 26 27 other words, the moving of social relationships to human consciousness. Unaware alignment 28 29 30 refers to the kind of life you are born into and stuck with, while active commitment refers to 31 32 the kind of life we make for ourselves because we feel it our duty to do so. And this is 33 34 because all of us—modern men and modern women both rich and poor—are existential 35 36 agents who are very much aware of our social contingency. 37 38 39 The implications of these observations for sociology are profound. In the rest of this article I 40 41 shall develop a thumbnail sketch of an alternative sociology of leisure with certain 42 43 epistemological, ontological and ethical implications. In so doing, my approach differs 44 45 46 noticeably from the doxa of orthodox sociology of leisure, by which I am referring to the 47 48 knowledge it thinks with, but not about. The views that I shall develop below have their point 49 50 of origin in another kind of sociological thinking which begins with the assumption that truth 51 52 is better revealed through essential action rather than ‘Theory’. These views are intimately 53 54 55 shaped by the work of social philosophers such a Bauman, Heller, Rancière, Rorty and 56 57 Sloterdijk, who each stress the ambivalence and social contingency of modern life, and which 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 17 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

17 1 2 3 culminates in a way of thinking that reverses a number of assumptions underpinning 4 5 orthodox sociology’s rational theorization of the modern world. 6 7 8 The first merit of this way of thinking is that it abandons the binary oppositions orthodox 9 10 sociology inherited from the Enlightenment tradition. Its second strength, and a considerable 11 12 one, is that it inscribes social theory within modernity by taking it out of the academy and 13 14 For Peer Review Only 15 placing it politically into everyday life (Badiou 2005). Its third virtue is to foreground the 16 17 question of what it means to be human in the modern world. In so doing it frames human life 18 19 as an existential problem. However, contra Heidegger, it stresses ‘becoming’ over ‘being’ 20 21 and the recognition that modern life is irreducibly mutable and heterogeneous. In addition to 22 23 this, it argues that rather than finding ourselves merely ‘being-thrown-in-the-world’, we are 24 25 26 knowledgeable actors who recognize the conditions of own social contingency. The fourth 27 28 virtue of this way of thinking is that it replaces the idea of a singular world as an ontological 29 30 given with the idea that we in fact inhabit pluralized worlds—contingent, shape-shifting, 31 32 fractured, underdesigned and undesignable, fuzzily-hierarchical, imperceptible worlds—in 33 34 35 which life is lived noch nicht surrounded by possibilities that have not yet been realized, and 36 37 where freedom is considered as our duty. Its fifth distinguishing feature, and perhaps its most 38 39 contentious, is that it brings the idea to sociology that what we understand about the 40 41 pluralized worlds in which we find ourselves is only knowable through some kind of story. 42 43 44 Let us look at this fifth feature in some more detail. My way of thinking sociologically 45 46 47 attempts to fasten the delight we find in the pluralized worlds of liquid modernity (Bauman 48 49 2000) onto new kinds of narrative informed by the kind of passion found in the best works of 50 51 literature and poetry. In other words, in deconstructing binary oppositions—between ‘subject’ 52 53 and ‘object’, ‘concept’ and ‘existence’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘action’, and so on—and in the 54 55 absence of ontological certainty, it is my contention that ‘rules of method’ have to be 56 57 58 assigned on what are essentially aesthetic grounds—on the basis of whose narrative has the 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 18 of 69

18 1 2 3 more attractive language, or the more engaging style. For a second time, I have put forward 4 5 what might appear a somewhat scandalous proposition—though once again for good and 6 7 assignable reasons. 8 9 10 Telling stories: sociological hermeneutics and the role of the cultural intermediaries 11 12 13 Let us look at this feature in more detail. Sociology will never be quite equal to the 14 For Peer Review Only 15 16 complexity and infinite nuance of what takes place in everyday life, but it is impossible to 17 18 think sociologically without arriving at some kind of interpretation, or another. However, and 19 20 to paraphrase what the great Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye (1963, p. 24) in his 21 22 Massey Lecture Giants in Time , drawing on Aristotle’s idea of the ‘universal event’, said of 23 24 25 the work of poets, what we meet in any interpretation is neither ‘real’ nor ‘unreal’: it is the 26 27 product of the educated imagination—if by imagination we mean not, as is sometimes 28 29 thought, the ability to invent, but the ability to disclose that which exists (Berger cited in 30 31 Burn, 2009). Thinking sociologically is neither fixed nor definitive. It is, on the contrary, a 32 33 place of perpetual deliberation, speculation calmed by an awareness of the ‘facts’ that lie 34 35 36 behind what is often naively called ‘reality’ and the sociological imagination, and which 37 38 makes them one and indivisible. Quite simply, sociologists make a good deal of assumptions 39 40 about everyday life and that there is a good deal of truth behind these, and these assumptions 41 42 are as good a place to start as any. 43 44 45 To continue with Frye’s synopsis, sociologists should never try to make any ‘real’ statements 46 47 48 at all, certainly no particular or specific ones. It is not our job to tell our readers what 49 50 happened , but what happens : not what did take place, but the thing that always does take 51 52 place. The biggest charlatans in sociology are the ‘Theorists’; the ones who claim that they 53 54 are telling their readers how things ‘really’ happened’. As Giddens (1974) has convincingly 55 56 57 argued, the relation between sociology and its subject matter—the two-way process by which 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 19 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

19 1 2 3 everyday experience is turned into sociology and sociology is turned into everyday 4 5 experience—has to be understood in terms of a ‘double hermeneutic’. In volunteering 6 7 themselves as cultural intermediaries in this way, what sociologists do is demonstrate that 8 9 10 virtue is better revealed in action rather than ‘Theory’. In so doing they reveal themselves as 11 12 the most honest of sociologists who say ‘This is my interpretation of the world and I’m going 13 14 to try like hellFor to make Peeryou believe that Review it’s true; all I ask is that Onlyyou suspend your own 15 16 ontological assumptions for a little while until I have told you my story’. 17 18 19 In other words, sociologists as cultural intermediaries challenge their readers to engage in 20 21 22 what Rorty (2007) calls ‘cultural politics’: the beginning of a conversation about what words 23 24 to use to create a better vision of the society we want to live in. What this tells us is that 25 26 rather than trust sociological ‘Theory’; we should trust sociologists’ stories instead. This is 27 28 because sociology conducted under the auspices of cultural politics can only be good or bad 29 30 in its own categorization. Sociologists as cultural intermediaries know what they are 31 32 33 presenting us with is both a superior and an inferior world than the one we usually live with, 34 35 but what they demand is that we keep looking steadily at them both. In this way of thinking 36 37 sociologically, no idea of reality is final and no interpretation, however good, is going to 38 39 pronounce some final absolute truth. Every new interpretation, every new formulation 40 41 42 emerging from this or that interpretation has the potential to change our understanding. 43 44 45 In anticipation of my critics, I am acutely aware that, as the eminent philosopher R.G. 46 47 Collingwood (1994) famously pointed out, the work of the scholar is constrained by two 48 49 important issues that need not concern the novelist or the poet. First, its narrative must be 50 51 localized in a time and space that has actually existed; and, second, it must be allied to 52 53 54 evidence which the scholar has gathered from reliable sources. In other words, as 55 56 sociologists, we do not have the freedom of the novelist or the poet; we are constrained by the 57 58 evidence. 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 20 of 69

20 1 2 3 Walter Benjamin, a scholar who occupied the opposite pole on the continuum on which the 4 5 rather conservative Collingwood’s views could be plotted, offered a more radical solution. To 6 7 scholars who wish capture the lives and times of any era, Benjamin (1974) suggested, they 8 9 10 should develop a ‘procedure of empathy’ by turning to the period in question in order to 11 12 redeem its sufferings. Benjamin’s invocation gives a crucial role to developing solidarity with 13 14 the worlds Forof those whose Peer lives we seek Review to understand. This concern Only is captured succinctly by 15 16 Brewer’s (2010) practice of ‘refuge history’ whose ‘procedure of empathy’ forms the basis of 17 18 19 the ‘rules of method’ underpinning the aforementioned book TITLE . As Brewer explains, 20 21 ‘refuge history’ 22 23 24 is close-up and on the small scale. Its emphasis is on a singular place rather than space, 25 26 the careful delineation of particularities and details, a degree of enclosure....Within the 27 28 29 space of refuge historical figures are actors and have agency, motives, feeling and 30 31 consciousness. They are the subjects not objects of history. The emphasis is on forms of 32 33 interdependence, on interiority and intimacy rather than surface and distance. The 34 35 pleasures of refuge history derive not from a sense of control of history but from a 36 37 sense of belonging, of connectedness—to both persons and details—in the past. 38 39 40 Whether as the expression of a certain common humanity or as an identification with a 41 42 particular group, this sort of history sees sympathy and understanding—a measure of 43 44 identification which can range from the quite abstract to the deeply emotive—as 45 46 essential to historical knowledge and insight. Refuge history is therefore… Heimlich 47 48 49 (2010, p. 89). 50 51 52 Trying to understand different worlds with different rules demands a special kind of 53 54 sociological inquiry. This is the kind of inquiry that takes into account the objective features 55 56 of the world while contemplating real-life situations—research respondents’ inner and outer 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 21 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

21 1 2 3 worlds—by accounting for their personal priorities and relationships with others. There are 4 5 two other important building blocks to this kind of inquiry. First it begins with the 6 7 assumption that the human ‘becoming-in-the-world’ is knit together with its own sense of 8 9 10 security and comfort—with feeling just right—and second that every world has its own sense 11 12 of morality—its inhabitants living life in a way that they deem right. 13 14 For Peer Review Only 15 Thinking with feeling: how to make the sociology of leisure heimleich 16 17 18 19 These insights form of the basis of my own sociological ‘rules of method’, which demand 20 21 that if we should seek to record the leisure lives of our research respondents accurately, we 22 23 must also aim at getting into the evidence of how and in what ways they experience leisure 24 25 and its social meaning for them, as well as something of its disorderly continuity— often 26 27 invisible, but all the more consequential for being so—which makes life palpable, and in 28 29 30 some cases, bearable. To paraphrase Foucault (1970, p. xi), the purpose of researching 31 32 leisure heimleich is to try to restore what usually eludes the consciousness of the sociological 33 34 imagination, which is looking at a milieu and its people from the inside and trying to feel 35 36 what it feels, what they feel. 37 38 39 One of my key concerns in the aforementioned book is to explore and evoke the emotional 40 41 42 contours of my respondents’ collective history. In other words, to paraphrase Nora, it is 43 44 concerned with what wells up from this generation that memory has welded together (1996, 45 46 p. 3). In developing this study, I inhabited a realm between the past and the present, moving 47 48 back- and-forth, in dialogue, constructing a narrative as an interpretive device made between 49 50 51 me and my respondents. The study works with the assumption that reality cannot be 52 53 reproduced in history, but the concentrated act of reproducing some of reality’s dynamics 54 55 can, of turning history into an essential action—even if the best it can hope to achieve is 56 57 make the world it renders in its pages feel human and not merely academic machination. In 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 22 of 69

22 1 2 3 other words, refuge history—understood here as the empathetic study of what Hegel called 4 5 ‘absolute spirit home-experience’ (Heller 2011) and the narrative that moves it—is the 6 7 domain par excellence of sociological hermeneutics. 8 9 10 Sociological hermeneutics is reminiscent of what Foucault termed a ‘general’ history (as 11 12 13 opposed to a ‘total’ history). Whereas a ‘total’ history draws its resources around a single 14 For Peer Review Only 15 unifying centre—‘a principle, a meaning, a spirit, a worldview, an overall shape’; a ‘general’ 16 17 history, deploys ‘the space of a dispersion’ (1972, p. 10). Foucault’s critical method 18 19 recognizes that all historical (and sociological) accounts are embedded in, and concerned 20 21 22 with, the exercise of power-knowledge. This critical awareness informs the study in question 23 24 in the sense that it deploys its own ‘space of a dispersion’ in the gap between what is 25 26 necessarily present and unnecessarily absent in the individual and collective memories of the 27 28 Inbetweeners. What this tells the reader of the book is that between the past and memory 29 30 there is something else at stake that it much more important than ensuring reliability and 31 32 33 representativeness. This is that interpretation itself is a moral issue: subject and object, the 34 35 counterfactual and the ‘factual’, the necessary and the contingent, and so on, are 36 37 intermingled; in this study, contraries always come together. 38 39 40 Metaphoricity and pictorial thinking 41 42 43 And yet, whether we are always conscious of the fact or not, we scholars—historians or 44 45 sociologists or whoever, depending on our education or individual taste or contingent 46 47 48 encounters (or more often than not, I suspect, all three of these), will have been captivated by 49 50 certain theories, certain ideas. From these ideas we derive the framework of our own 51 52 intuitions, the underpinning convictions that form our own scholarship. Many of the shaping 53 54 beliefs (of which I am conscious) that underpin my own scholarship are located in the 55 56 57 sociology of Zygmunt Bauman—especially his ideas of ‘solid’ modernity and ‘liquid’ 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 23 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

23 1 2 3 modernity—which attests that as the world alters, we need the right vocabulary with which to 4 5 interpret it. 6 7 8 It is my view that Bauman sets the agenda for sociology today: for what we think 9 10 sociologically about when it comes to the modern world. Bauman came up with his own 11 12 13 narrative voice that allows him to interpret modernity in a special way. Writing the modern 14 For Peer Review Only 15 world as ‘solid’ versus ‘liquid’ is the creation of two discrete modern experiences in 16 17 themselves on the page. The way the reader knows that Bauman has found the right narrative 18 19 voices for those experiences is because the sociology gives you access to those two 20 21 22 experiences—the felt life—that is those two opposing versions of modernity in themselves. 23 24 25 Used in the way that Bauman uses them, the metaphors of ‘solidity’ and ‘liquidity’ are 26 27 intellectual devices, not ‘things’ in the world (Beilharz 2010). In other words, Bauman 28 29 constructs the world as ‘ideal typical’ meaning ( ideal types are not descriptions of reality, but 30 31 analytical tools sociologists use to try to understand it). This enables him (and us) to see the 32 33 modern world through ‘solid’ and ‘liquid’ representations that he has imaginatively posed on 34 35 36 it by using these ‘ideal types’. 37 38 39 The juxtaposition of ‘solidity and ‘liquidity’ offers sociologists a fresh way of thinking about 40 41 leisure. This is a way of thinking that does not depend on ‘Theory’, but rather on metaphor, 42 43 which is the rhetorical tool that enables us to ‘defamiliarize the familiar’ and show it in a new 44 45 light (Bauman 1990). Metaphor is that part of language that enables us to practice 46 47 48 hermeneutics. That is, on the one hand, to make meaning i.e. make intelligible that which 49 50 could not otherwise be grasped, and on the other, to deepen our understanding so as to make 51 52 meaning even more meaningful, in the process creating some democratic operating principles 53 54 as we go along. Seen in this way, Bauman presents us with some intellectual devices which 55 56 57 signal the continuation the sociological imagination by an alternative means, which retrains it 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 24 of 69

24 1 2 3 into looking for both similarities and contradictions, in other words, the ambivalence of what 4 5 we casually call ‘reality’, and to see significance and meaning in unexpected places. 6 7 8 This metaphorical reconstruction of modernity, as Bauman conceives it, is by no means a 9 10 simple replacement of ‘solid’ modern by ‘liquid’ modern considerations: on the contrary, the 11 12 13 central tenet of Bauman’s sociology is the need to exhort critical analysis to constant 14 For Peer Review Only 15 juxtaposition. Bauman recognizes that thinking is unsurpassed when we juxtapose, when we 16 17 recognize the value of bringing opposites together, when we realize that two 'realities', one 18 19 posed next to the other, are in one way or another connected. 20 21 22 As the Wittgenstein scholar, Peter Hacker (2010), points out, questions about ‘what it is like 23 24 25 to be something?’ require contrasts in order to make sense. What is it like for a person born 26 27 into the working class to experience leisure? This is not a good question. For Hacker, critical 28 29 inquiry is dialogical in spirit. In other words, we should turn our attention to what two 30 31 things—in the case my study TITLE (2003), the certain solid modernity and the unpredictable 32 33 liquid modernity—might say about each other. What is it like for a person born into a solid, 34 35 36 seemingly permanent, immutable modernity to find themselves in a liquid modern world? 37 38 This is a perfectly good question. In other words, following Wittgenstein’s emphasis on 39 40 seeing things differently and the associated notions of pictorial thinking through ‘family 41 42 resemblances’, there is a requirement that there be a juxtaposition, and once there is all sorts 43 44 45 of stories are likely to follow. From this shuttling between ‘solid’ and ‘liquid’—concepts as 46 47 magic wands in and of themselves which illuminate, with an almost miraculous precision, our 48 49 way of thinking by maximizing contrast—it is my argument that it is possible to weave a 50 51 larger fabric, a sustained deliberation on some key themes, to be precise, a picture of the 52 53 54 always unrestful modernity. 55 56 57 Indisciplinarity 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 25 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

25 1 2 3 What the foregoing discussion tells us if nothing else is that every study is, in part, a 4 5 reflection of its author and his putative assumptions. This is not to say that I cannot look at 6 7 the world other than through the spectacles fitted for me by Zygmunt Bauman. Bauman’s 8 9 10 sense of sociology, as he once told me, is that it is like a sponge, a creature porous in texture 11 12 and of uncertain outline, whose hollows embody countless visiting ideas which swim and 13 14 often stay toFor breed. Sociology Peer will never Review be an academic discipline Only sure of itself, capable of 15 16 making authoritative statements or offering definitive answers. It will always be, for better or 17 18 19 worse, tentative in its deliberations. What this also tells us is that thinking sociologically 20 21 should never be content with any one way of making sense of the world, nor should it rest 22 23 content that there is any one discipline best placed to make sense of it. 24 25 26 Steering a course between different perspectives, my own approach develops its own 27 28 hermeneutics of ‘undecidability’ that offers a principle of convergence that we extend beyond 29 30 sociology, history, philosophy and all the rest into the world of culture and our knowledge of 31 32 33 it, the world of Kulturwissenschaft . What this tells the reader is that my approach attempts to 34 35 account for individuals and their worlds by operating on an indisciplinary basis (Rancière 36 37 2008), which is not only a matter of going above and beyond the call of duty of sociology as 38 39 we normally understand it, but also breaking with it. Whereas interdisciplinarity merely 40 41 42 signals a combination of approaches drawn from various disciplines, indisciplinarity moves 43 44 outside boundaries, setting itself free by subordinating the false divisions between sociology, 45 46 psychology, geography, philosophy and so on, to the sociological imagination, which affects 47 48 the whole person rather than just training the mind, bringing with it moral development that 49 50 leads to the discovery that the imaginative world and the world around us are different 51 52 53 worlds, and that the imaginative world is more important (Frye 1963). 54 55 56 Conclusions 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 26 of 69

26 1 2 3 What these last observations attest is not only that all those awakened to rethinking 4 5 sociologically anew must be aware that ethical questions are today more difficult (Sloterdijk 6 7 2013, p. 90), but also that sociological theory means something different. As it rose from its 8 9 10 death it developed some ‘new rules of method’ which, following Wittgenstein’s emphasis on 11 12 seeing things differently and the associated notions of pictorial thinking through ‘family 13 14 resemblances’,For abandons Peer theorizing altogether. Review In other words, afterOnly ‘Theory’, narrative— 15 16 another expression for story-telling, as says Sloterdijk (2013, p. 11), bent on the ‘musical- 17 18 19 rhapsodic transmission of knowledge rather than the ‘prosaic-communicative procurement of 20 21 knowledge’—was now resurrected as a viable alternative to ‘Theory’, and not just as 22 23 intelligent but better made to the measure of the contemporary world. This ‘new’ method not 24 25 only entailed taking ‘Theory’ out of the academy and placing it politically into everyday life. 26 27 It was also to become a way of explaining social life that is on the one hand ‘indisciplinary’ 28 29 30 and on the other content to rely on interpretations drawn from metaphors (and by default 31 32 other tropes drawn from literature and poetry), rather than depending on facts or being fixated 33 34 with establishing grand ‘Theory’. 35 36 37 Those who use pictorial thinking through ‘language games’ argue two things: firstly, that it is 38 39 a different way of thinking that recognizes that as worlds alter, we need new vocabularies 40 41 42 with which to interpret them, and secondly, that sociologically there are many different 43 44 stories that we can tell and re-tell. What these stories do not do is try to conceptualize the 45 46 worlds under scrutiny through the rules of logic. What they do, instead, is literalize 47 48 metaphor. This is what makes pictorial thinking valuable. It alerts us to what abstract 49 50 conceptual thinking cannot: those stubbornly universal human dilemmas—questions to 51 52 53 which sociologists have found few compelling answers—which have never vanished from 54 55 life. The hallmark of this ‘rule of method’, then, is that it recurs perennially as our 56 57 understandings are revised and revivified as society and culture shift and change. 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 27 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

27 1 2 3 As we have also seen, the practice of pointing out the questionable epistemological grounds 4 5 which form the basis of orthodox sociological ‘Theory’, while simultaneously asking ones 6 7 readers to temporarily suspend their own ontological assumptions, is one of the most 8 9 10 distinctive features of this reflexive approach. Some readers will no doubt find the 11 12 combination of outspoken epistemological criticism and deferred ontological judgement 13 14 troubling. OthersFor will bePeer equally unhappy Review about accepting such Onlya frankly novelizing 15 16 methodological approach, especially when it is applied to certain aspects of abnormal leisure 17 18 19 (Rojek 2005; 2013), for example. However, the disorderly continuity of modern life is 20 21 infinitely less predictable and more strangely ambiguous than any sociological theory would 22 23 suggest. Sociologists must face up to the fact that each and every one of them is standing in a 24 25 moral quagmire as they try to illuminate the lived (leisure) life through their different stories. 26 27 As such, to paraphrase Sloterdijk, we must recognize that as sociologists we must be prepared 28 29 30 to be challenged where our own tacit assumptions are interrogated. When there is no solid 31 32 ground under the sociological enterprise, no basis for moral certainty, the truth is that the 33 34 only other way the authority of any work can be enhanced is through the acknowledgment of 35 36 its predispositions. 37 38 39 40 41 The effects of social inequality, we can agree, continue, and always will be important for 42 43 understanding leisure. In this regard we have learned from Giddens, the two-way process by 44 45 which everyday experience is turned into sociology and sociology is turned into everyday 46 47 experience should always be promoted by sociologists as a democratic activity. Any 48 49 50 sociologist intent on revealing the effects of social inequality on leisure must try to ensure 51 52 that they are showing us both of these things. There is no one theory or ‘rule of method’ in 53 54 this regard; the genuinely reflexive sociologist will write these the way that they must write 55 56 them. In the most compelling stories the writing will be clear and the ideas will be based on 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 28 of 69

28 1 2 3 things seen by the sociologist and spoken about by their research respondents rather than on 4 5 what they think as a professional sociologist and is excited to think they now understand it 6 7 all. 8 9 10 11 12 This finally brings me to the sixth, and final, feature of my ‘new rules of method’. This is the 13 14 admonitionFor to all sociologists Peer that they Reviewmust complicate their stories Only by questioning what it is 15 16 possible for them as researchers, or anyone else for that matter, to finally ‘know’ about other 17 18 19 people. It is all too easy to feel and to theorize people less fortunate than yourself (also 20 21 known as ‘the poor’) as part of a mass—or any other kind of social grouping vulnerable to 22 23 political manipulation. It is also all too easy to disapprove of what that mass do in their 24 25 leisure. But that kind of feeling and theorizing is as foolish as the disapproving is 26 27 reprehensible. To put some additional gloss on James’ (2009, p. 9) perceptive observations, 28 29 30 the mass are us : a multitude of individuals. They just happen to be leading less fortunate 31 32 lives. Any sociologist who speaks about social justice from their privileged position will not 33 34 be able to do so in any compelling ways unless they can dispel the disapproving, puritanical 35 36 attitude that often pervades sociology. In order to do this, they will not only have to replace 37 38 39 this attitude with compassion—as Paul Taylor (2009) observed, identifying with those less 40 41 privileged than yourself is not enough, you need to really feel their plight: ‘to identify is 42 43 merely to love one's neighbour as oneself; to empathise is to love one's neighbour for himself 44 45 or herself’—but just as importantly recognize that their own fortune begins with their own 46 47 freedom. 48 49 50 51 52 What I have argued in a nutshell in this article is that, to paraphrase Bauman (1989), if 53 54 sociology is going to claim the right to speak with authority about leisure in the twenty-first 55 56 century, it is going to have to update its conceptual, empirical and normative understandings 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 29 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

29 1 2 3 of leisure. Currently it presents us with only a two-dimensional understanding of leisure 4 5 inherited from the dichotomous thinking that underpins the Enlightenment tradition. We need 6 7 a third dimension. What I have offered in the second part of the foregoing discussion is an 8 9 10 alternative way of thinking sociologically that gives us this dimension. This is the path 11 12 forward for the sociology of leisure. Bauman, Heller, Rancière, Rorty and Sloterdijk have led 13 14 the way. GivenFor the resources Peer of their scholarship,Review there is no reason Only not to follow. 15 16 17 18 19 Notes on contributor 20 21 22 References 23 24 25 Badiou, A. 2005. The adventure of French philosophy. New Left Review 35 26 27 28 September/October: 67-76. 29 30 31 32 Bauman, Z. 1989. Hermeneutics and modern social theory. In D. Held and J. B. Thompson 33 34 (Eds.) Social theory of modern societies: Anthony Giddens and his critics . Cambridge, 35 36 37 Cambridge University Press. 38 39 40 41 Bauman, Z. 2000. Liquid modernity . Cambridge, Polity Press. 42 43 44 45 Beilharz, P. 2010. Zygmunt Bauman (1925—). In J. Simons (Ed.) From Agamben to Žižek: 46 47 48 Contemporary critical theorists . Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press. 49 50 51 52 Benjamin, W. 1974. On the concept of history. Gesammelten Schriften I:2 . Translated by 53 54 Dennis Redmond 8/4/01 . Frankfurt am Main , Suhrkamp, Verlag. 55 56 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 30 of 69

30 1 2 3 AUTHOR, T. 2003. 4 5 6 7 AUTHOR, T. and T. AUTHOR. 2004. 8 9 10 11 AUTHOR, T. 2013. 12 13 14 Bourdieu, ForP. 1984. Distinction: Peer A social Review critique of the judgment Only of taste . London, Routledge. 15 16 17 Bourdieu, P. et al. 1999. The weight of the world: Social suffering in Contemporary society . 18 19 20 Cambridge: Polity Press. 21 22 23 Brewer, J. 2010. Microhistory and the histories of everyday life. Centre for Advanced 24 25 Studies . Ludwig-Maximilians- UniversitätMünchen: E-Series Number 5. 26 27 www.cas.lmu.de/publikationen/eseries. 28 29 30 Burn, G. 2009. Have I broken your hear. Guardian Review 7th March. 31 32 33 34 35 Clarke, J. and Criticher, C. 1985. The devil makes work for idle hands: Leisure in capitalist 36 37 Britain . Basingstoke, Macmillan. 38 39 40 41 Collingwood, R.G. 1994. The idea of history. Revised edition with lectures 1926-1928 . (edited 42 43 44 by Jan van Der Dussen) Oxford, Clarendon Press [1946]. 45 46 47 48 Davis, C. 2013. Foreword: Analyzing philosophy’s temperamental symptom. In P. Sloterdijk. 49 50 Philosophical temperaments: From Plato to Foucault . Translated by Thomas 51 52 Dunlap/Foreword by Creston Davis. New York, Columbia University Press. 53 54 55 Derrida, J. 1990. Some statements etc. Stanford, Stanford University Press. 56 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 31 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

31 1 2 3 Dumazadier, J. 1974. The sociology of leisure . Amsterdam, Elsevier. 4 5 6 7 Elias, N. and Dunning, E. 1969. The quest for excitement in leisure. Society and Leisure 2 8 9 10 December: 50-85. 11 12 13 14 Foucault, M.For 1970. The Peer order of things: Review the archaeology of the humanOnly sciences. New York, 15 16 Vintage. 17 18 19 20 21 Foucault, M. 1972. The archaeology of knowledge . London, Tavistock. 22 23 24 25 Frye, N. 1963. The educated imagination . Toronto, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. 26 27 28 29 30 Giddens, A. 1974. New rules of sociological method . London, Hutchinson. 31 32 33 34 de Grazia, S. 1964. Of time, work, and leisure . New York, Anchor Books, Doubleday and 35 36 Company, Inc. 37 38 39 40 41 Gramsci, A. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Translated and edited by Quintin 42 43 Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith. New York, International Publishers. 44 45 46 47 Habermas, J. 1975. Legitimation Crisis . Trans. and with an introduction by Thomas 48 49 50 McCarthy. Boston, Beacon Press. 51 52 53 54 Hacker, P. 2010. In J. Garvey, Interview with Peter Hacker, The Philosopher’s Magazine 51, 55 56 25 th October. 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 32 of 69

32 1 2 3 4 5 Heller, A. 2011. Where are we at home? In J. Rundell (Ed.) Aesthetics and Modernity: Essays 6 7 by Agnes Heller . Plymouth, Lexington Books. 8 9 10 11 12 Henderson, K. A. 2013. Feminist leisure studies: Origins, accomplishments and prospects. In 13 14 T. AUTHORFor (Ed.) The Peer Routledge handbook Review of leisure studies . LondonOnly and New York, 15 16 Routledge. 17 18 19 James, C. 2009. The revolt of the pendulum: Essays 2005-2008 . London, Picador. 20 21 22 Jonsson, S. 2010. The ideology of universalism. New left review 63 May/June: 115-126. 23 24 25 Martin, S. 2005. Culs-de-sac, review of The politics of aesthetics: The distribution of the 26 27 28 sensible , Radical Philosophy 131 May/June 39-44. 29 30 31 Nora, P. 1996. General introduction: Between memory and history. In P. Nora. Realms of 32 33 memory: Rethinking the french past. 1. conflicts and divisions . Columbia, Columbia 34 35 University Press. 36 37 38 Panagia, D. 2010. Partage du sensible: the distribution of the sensible. In J-P Deranty (Ed.) 39 40 Jacques Rancière: Key concepts . Durham, Acumen. 41 42 43 Rancière, J. 2004. The philosopher and his poor . Translated by John Drury, Corinne Oster 44 45 46 and Andrew Parker. Durham and London, Duke University Press. 47 48 49 Rancière, J. 2005. The politics of aesthetics: The distribution of the sensible . Translated by 50 51 Gabriel Rockhill. London, Continuum. 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 33 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

33 1 2 3 Rancière, J. 2008. ‘Jacques Rancière and indisciplinarity: an interview with Marie-Aude 4 5 Baronian and Mireille Rosello. Posted on Void Manufacturing , 15 th October. 6 7 http://voidmanufacturing.wordpress.com/2008/10/15/jacques-ranciere-interview-2007/ 8 9 10 Rancière, J. 2009. Afterword/The method of equality: An answer to some questions. In G. 11 12 13 Rockhill and P. Watts (Eds.) Jacques Rancière: history, politics, aesthetics . Durham and 14 For Peer Review Only 15 London, Duke University Press. 16 17 18 Roberts, K.1978. Contemporary society and the growth of leisure . London, Longman. 19 20 21 Roberts, K.1981. Leisure . Second edition. London, Longman. 22 23 24 Rojek, C. 1985. Capitalism and leisure theory . London and New York, Tavistock 25 26 Publications. 27 28 29 Rojek, C. 1995. Decentring leisure: Rethinking leisure theory . London, Sage. 30 31 32 Rojek, C. 2000. Leisure and culture . Basingstoke, Macmillan. 33 34 35 Rojek, C. 2010). The labour of leisure: The culture of free time. London, Sage. 36 37 38 Rojek, C. 2013. Abnormal leisure and normalization. In T. AUTHOR (Ed.) The Routledge 39 40 41 handbook of leisure studies . London and New York, Routledge. 42 43 44 Rorty, R. 2007 . Philosophy as cultural politics: Philosophical papers volume 4 . Cambridge, 45 46 Cambridge University Press. 47 48 49 Sloterdijk, P. 2013. Philosophical temperaments: From Plato to Foucault . Translated by 50 51 Thomas Dunlap/Foreword by Creston Davis. New York, Columbia University Press. 52 53 54 Swenson, J. 2006. Jacques Rancière. In L. D. Kritzman (Ed.) The Columbia history of 55 56 twentieth-century French thought. New York, Columbia University Press. 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 34 of 69

34 1 2 3 Taylor, P. 2009. A very English playwright: The return of Alan Bennett. Independent Review, 4 5 6th November. 6 7 8 Watson, B. and Ratna, A. 2011. Bollywood in the park: Thinking intersectionally about 9 10 public leisure space. Leisure/Loisir 35, no. 1: 71-86. 11 12 13 Watson, B. and Scraton, S. J. 2013. Leisure studies and intersectionality. Leisure Studies 32, 14 For Peer Review Only 15 16 no. 1: 35-47. 17 18 19 i 20 My use of the term ‘the poor’ here is Rancière’s which works with the assumption that the 21 history of Western thought is one in which freedom and the right to think are premised on 22 situating and excluding those whose social role is perceived other than to think. In applying 23 the term in this way I am also using it as a shorthand to include all those social groups who 24 are in one way or another subjugated and/or excluded. 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 35 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

1 1 2 3 4 5 The Crisis in Sociological Leisure Studies and What to Do about It 6 7 8 9 10 In recent years, social philosophers such as Zygmunt Bauman, Agnes Heller, Jacques Rancière, Richard 11 12 Rorty and Peter Sloterdijk have generated tremendous excitement by offering some revolutionary and 13 14 radicalFor ways of thinking Peer about human lifeReview in the twenty-first century thatOnly present some fundamental 15 16 challenges to sociology as it is normally conducted. Responding to this trend, this article argues that we 17 18 need to not only fundamentally re-think what we mean by theory in the sociology of leisure but also how 19 20 we carry out research in leisure studies. The first part of the article argues that orthodox sociological 21 ‘Theory’ is dead and it offers some good reasons why this is so. It is subsequently argued that there is a 22 23 crisis in leisure theory which has its roots in the central tenets of sociology. Taking its cue from Jacques 24 25 Rancière’s classic study The Philosopher and His Poor the article develops the argument that if social 26 27 inequality was once upon a time the fundamental issue in the discursive formation known as the 28 29 sociology of leisure, today it urgently needs an alternative cognitive framework for thinking outside this 30 31 paradigm. In order to substantiate this critique the discussion considers two leading theoretical 32 33 perspectives in leisure studies: the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu and feminist sociology, and in particular 34 the emphasis currently placed on the idea of intersectionality. It is argued thereafter that sociologists of 35 36 leisure, and others who carry out research in leisure studies, generally have a particular activity in view: 37 38 methodological uniformity of both the employment of research methods and the philosophical study of 39 40 how, in practice, researchers go about their business. But there are some different ‘rules of method’ when 41 42 we engage in thinking sociologically after ‘Theory’. As will be demonstrated in the final part of the 43 44 article, analysis of this second kind of activity does not rely on the tools, epistemological frameworks and 45 ontological assumptions generally used to make sense of leisure. Instead it develops its own new ‘rules 46 47 of method’ which turn out to be radical, because they are not ‘rules of method’ at all. 48 49 50 51 Keywords: sociology; leisure theory; social inequality; methodology; sociological hermeneutics; cultural 52 53 intermediaries 54 55 56 57 Introduction 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 36 of 69

2 1 2 3 4 5 It seems to me unlikely that any important sociological theories of leisure will ever be written 6 7 again. Leisure ‘Theory’ is dead. Theory, that is to say, within the sense of theory as the 8 9 10 ‘founding fathers’ of sociology understood it. In the future, I can imagine Annals of Leisure 11 12 Research articles and even some special issues still devoted to sociological leisure ‘Theory’. 13 14 But these willFor invariably Peer represent flights Review into the past, package Onlytours to much-loved Arcadias 15 16 where sociology used to have some especially firm footholds: functionalism, Marxism, 17 18 19 symbolic interactionism, feminism and so on. As is usually the case at properly consoling 20 21 funerals, those writing these articles or responsible for putting the special issues together 22 23 won’t dream of dwelling on the deceased’s bad points, because they’ll no doubt be so carried 24 25 away by the eulogies that got them thinking about the resurrection in the first place— a bit of 26 27 nostalgia; those were the days. But nobody should be fooled by what people will be saying at 28 29 30 these wakes. Make no mistake about it, leisure ‘Theory’ is dead. 31 32 33 34 Personally, I see no reason to lament the passing of leisure ‘Theory’—the talent wasted on 35 36 theorizing contemporary sociological understandings of leisure should be used for the more 37 38 39 urgent task of theorizing contemporary leisure. It is, however, worthwhile enquiring why 40 41 leisure ‘Theory’ has become redundant; it may help us to both understand more closely the 42 43 sociology of leisure’s historical situation and begin to map out for it an alternative future. It is 44 45 to these two tasks that this article is in the main devoted. 46 47 48 49 50 The end of leisure ‘Theory’ 51 52 53 54 If I were asked to mark the moment when the decline of ‘Theory’ became inevitable in 55 56 leisure studies, by identifying the work of one sociologist, I would choose Chris Rojek. Of 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 37 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

3 1 2 3 the key sociologists in leisure studies, Rojek is an important standard bearer. In books such as 4 5 Capitalism and Leisure Theory (1985) , Decentring Leisure (1995), Leisure and Culture 6 7 (2000), Leisure Theory (2005) and The Labour of Leisure (2009) , we are presented with a 8 9 10 sociology that registers no allegiances to ‘isms’ or any other signature gestures. His work 11 12 offers us not a ‘Theorist’s’ world of leisure but one in whose sociological evidence we can 13 14 believe. AsFor both of these Peer books demonstrate, Review increasingly from theOnly last three decades of the 15 16 twentieth century, in pursuing their leisure interests, fewer and fewer individuals have been 17 18 19 able to believe in the value of the social roles assigned to them at birth. If, in Rojek’s mid- 20 21 nineties mind, the postmodern imagination emerged as a new way to think and understand 22 23 how we engage with leisure in modernity, by the end of the noughties he was just as 24 25 persuasively arguing that what we call ‘leisure’ today is actually a form of social and cultural 26 27 life in which ‘work’ and ‘leisure’ often intersect and mutually inform one another. What 28 29 30 Rojek’s work demonstrates more than anybody else’s is that theory continues to prosper 31 32 when it challenges the intellectual attitude that once defined ‘Theory’. This is one good 33 34 answer to our original question about the decline of ‘Theory’ in leisure studies. 35 36 37 38 39 This answer implies, however, that sociological leisure studies is in rude health. But it is not. 40 41 To understand why, we must consider a second answer. Sociological leisure studies is 42 43 actually in a quiet but deep state of crisis. But what do I mean by crisis? To squeeze together 44 45 two definitions, the crisis of sociological leisure studies can be understood as a result of a 46 47 ‘legitimation crisis’ (Habermas 1975), reflected in the erosion of the explanatory basis of 48 49 50 previously important theoretical perspectives in sociology, which has led to an ‘organic 51 52 crisis’ of authority that ‘consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot 53 54 be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear’ (Gramsci 1971 p. 55 56 276). What sort of crisis is this? My argument is that the situation in sociological leisure 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 38 of 69

4 1 2 3 studies is part of an intellectual crisis that is mirrored in all areas of leisure studies, which has 4 5 in no uncertain terms precipitated the decline in the study of leisure in universities across the 6 7 globe. But what makes this crisis even more serious is that it has presaged ‘business as usual’ 8 9 10 and the deepening of present trends. This crisis presents challenges that deliver some heavy 11 12 blows to the discursive formation, which despite being relatively new feels more like an 13 14 ageing boxerFor staggering Peer with exhaustion Review in the final round of a championshipOnly fight, who still 15 16 thinks he has the right punches and combinations to win, but can’t see that this is more 17 18 19 illusion than hit. These challenges bring into question the tacit, invariant assumption of 20 21 sociology that in order to understand people’s leisure choices we need to put their social 22 23 inequality at the forefront of our analyses. In other words, sociology, in leisure studies, as 24 25 elsewhere, is the very thought of social inequality (Rancière 2004). This is the paradox that 26 27 pervades the discursive formation, for it is in the idea of social inequality that sociology 28 29 30 assumes the ‘truth’ about our leisure is located. It is also a paradox of this crisis that its roots 31 32 are to be found in the circumstances that originally gave rise to sociological leisure studies. 33 34 35 36 As is well known, in the 1970s the study of leisure was led away from its uncritical comfort 37 38 39 zone by bright academics from disciplines as diverse as urban studies, geography, history, 40 41 social work, and especially sociology, attracted to a new field of study whose subject burned 42 43 brightly in their own free time, and who in due course not only produced a new dynamic 44 45 subject field which reflected the diversity of their own interests straddling theory, policy and 46 47 practice , but also a paradigm shift by bringing attention to social inequality as the 48 49 50 fundamental issue in the study of leisure. It is this second observation that alerts us to the 51 52 compelling influence that sociology was to have on this new interdisciplinary subject field. 53 54 Indeed, not only did sociology make a recognizable aspect of human life appear strange by 55 56 de-familiarizing the familiar, but it also provided the means to think differently about leisure 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 39 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

5 1 2 3 and its intimate relation to the often unfair (and ideological) functioning, organization and 4 5 development of society. In broad outline, then, a new, critical perspective of leisure was 6 7 established through a sociological analysis: patterns and configurations of leisure vary across 8 9 10 time and from society to society and culture to culture (Dumazadier 1974; Elias and Dunning 11 12 1969; de Grazia 1964; Kelly 1978; 1983; Parker 1971; 1983; Roberts 1978; 1981), and 13 14 leisure is transformedFor fundamentallyPeer by Review modernity in general (Rojek Only 1985; 1995) and the 15 16 depredations of industrial capitalism in particular (Clarke and Critcher 1985). 17 18 19 20 21 Yet, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the crisis in the sociology of leisure has its 22 23 roots in the aftermath this paradigm shift. Although the necessity of bringing to attention 24 25 social inequality in constraining the freedom and reducing the ability of some people to take 26 27 up ‘leisure’ on their own terms was important 30 or 40 years ago, it has by now run its course 28 29 30 and is in need of an alternative vision. Why? By continuing to pose social inequality— 31 32 particularly though not exclusively of class, of gender, and of ethnicity—as the primary ‘fact’ 33 34 that needs to be explained with regard to people’s leisure, sociology has ended up explaining 35 36 its necessity (Rancière 2004). 37 38 39 40 41 This might appear a somewhat scandalous proposition; it is meant to be. As such, it demands 42 43 a critical discussion of some of the dominant standpoints in the sociology of leisure. Let us 44 45 consider two. On one hand there is the massive legacy of Bourdieu, the social theorist of 46 47 Distinction (Bourdieu 1984) , whose theories and concepts are some of the most regularly and 48 49 50 uncritically applied in leisure studies; on the other is feminist sociology, and in particular its 51 52 foregrounding of intersectionality in the current theoretical landscape in leisure studies 53 54 (Caudwell and Brown 2011; Henderson 2013; Watson and Ratna 2011; Watson and Scraton 55 56 2013). Here my aim is to simply give two illustrations of what happens to understandings of 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 40 of 69

6 1 2 3 leisure when inequality is presupposed. This is important to note, particularly with regard to 4 5 feminist sociology of leisure with its qualitative evidentiary bases and miscellany of 6 7 theoretical argumentation. Of course, it is important to remember that intersectionalities 8 9 10 perspective must be understood as just one of many developments in feminist sociology of 11 12 leisure. But there is no getting away from the fact that it is central to current feminist thinking 13 14 in leisure studiesFor and asPeer such it provides Review an ideal theoretical and Only methodological framework 15 16 in terms of which one could apply Rancière’s polemic and respond to it. 17 18 19 20 i 21 The sociologists of the leisure and ‘the poor’ 22 23 Bourdieu: the arbitrary as necessity 24 25 26 27 28 Let us begin with Bourdieu. Bourdieu is someone whose work is widely taught (if not applied 29 30 empirically) in sociological leisure studies (Jarvie and Maguire 1994 ; Harris 2005); one of 31 32 the main reasons for this is that the key theme underlying his oeuvre is to understand the 33 34 35 resources—namely economic capital, social capital and cultural capital—brought to bear in 36 37 competitive struggles for leisure. Yet there is a paradox at the heart of his sociology: 38 39 although it is extremely critical of social inequality in leisure, its subjects have no social role 40 41 in it other than to perform this social inequality as they endure it as their life. As Swenson 42 43 explains, for Rancière, this leads to ‘a theory of the necessary misrecognition of social 44 45 46 relations as the very mechanism of their reproduction’ (2006: 642). This tautology is 47 48 important for our purposes since it clearly identifies the limits of Bourdieu’s sociology for 49 50 understanding leisure. Not only is social inequality built into the deep structure of Bourdieu’s 51 52 sociology, but it also performs the brilliant feat of making ‘the poor’ feel ennobled while 53 54 55 confirming their extirpation from the world of leisure choices (see for example Bourdieu’s 56 57 magnus opus The weight of the world (Bourdieu et al. 1999)). It isn’t that Bourdieu’s respect 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 41 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

7 1 2 3 for ‘the poor’ isn’t genuine, it is simply the case that his insights are not convincingly 4 5 constituted of the different situations in which social inequality occurs. In a nutshell, the great 6 7 sociologist of reflexivity thinks that the majority of ‘the poor’ do not have any time for 8 9 10 leisure and he presumes that those who do of being incapable of having any—well, any that 11 12 doesn’t incite the kind of disapproving, puritanical look made corporate by the Frankfurt 13 14 School, whoseFor ghost livesPeer on in Bourdieu’s Review sociology, grimly lookingOnly down and shaking its 15 16 mocking head at those amongst ‘the poor’ ‘aspiring to reranking [ reclassement ] through 17 18 19 [their] feats in the great simile industry of the new petty bourgeoisie: the manufacture of junk 20 21 jewelry or sale of symbolic services; the commerce of youth leaders, marriage counsellors, 22 23 sex therapists, advertising executives, or dieticians determined to create within people the 24 25 symbolic need necessary for the enlargement of their market, hence for the reconquest of 26 27 their inheritance’ (Rancière 2004, p.p. 192-193). 28 29 30 31 32 The limits of the leisure intersectionalities perspective and methodology 33 34 35 36 Another version of this theme is replayed in the theoretical perspective and methodology 37 38 39 known as ‘intersectionality’ some feminists have adopted in leisure studies, which works on 40 41 the basis that social inequality in leisure is relational and has multiple dimensions. The clear, 42 43 rational logic of this perspective suggests that by taking into account the concept of ‘class’ 44 45 multiplied by ‘gender’ multiplied by ‘race’ and so on what is revealed is something even 46 47 more unequal. However, it never stops to consider, that in practice, an odd kind of polarizing 48 49 50 effect might just take place. Rather than amplifying each other, social inequalities multiplied 51 52 might just cancel each other out. A good example of this approach is Watson and Ratna’s 53 54 (2011) research in the UK. Their article claims that intersectionality offers us a way to move 55 56 beyond static interpretations of compound social inequality by taking into representations of 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 42 of 69

8 1 2 3 shifting, multi-layered social inequalities which are constructed across racialized, classed and 4 5 gendered social relations in particular leisure spaces. Yet Watson and Ratna’s account offers 6 7 very little that is concrete or geared to representing the social conditions under scrutiny. What 8 9 10 it does instead is lock the ostensibly multi-disadvantaged into a singular, self-contained 11 12 leisure world . In so doing, what it fails to recognize is that ‘the poor’, in common with most 13 14 other men Forand women inPeer liquid modern Review societies (Bauman 2000), Only actually inhabit pluralized 15 16 worlds where there are different possibilities. In liquid modernity, everyone wears many hats 17 18 19 and inhabits many worlds. It is sociologists who wish to lock them into a single, 20 21 disadvantaged world. 22 23 24 25 Whereas those who theorize leisure by ‘thinking intersectionally’ see a singular world made 26 27 up of complex intersections of social inequality, there is another approach to thinking 28 29 30 sociology that sees worlds in the plural. This is a view that is not only critical of the 31 32 assumption that the theoretical world is the only horizon from which really existing realities 33 34 take their meaning, but one which argues that when we understand the world ( sic ) in the 35 36 plural, as the social philosopher Peter Sloterdijk does, ‘then there are different existential 37 38 39 possibilities, that is to say, difference itself becomes the unity into which life draws its 40 41 breath’ (Davis 2013, p.p. viii-ix). This view is confirmed by some research in leisure studies 42 43 which suggests that an individual may inhabit several different worlds at once and often 44 45 within an ordinary day (AUTHOR 2003; AUTHOR and AUTHOR 2004; AUTHOR 2013). It 46 47 is scarcely any longer possible (if it ever was) to explain really existing realities (or identities) 48 49 50 rationally as unfolding in time and space with any kind of fixity. 51 52 53 54 Let us explore this argument in a little more detail. Robert Musil, the great Austrian writer, 55 56 suggested 80 years ago (in his highly influential unfinished novel The Man Without 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 43 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

9 1 2 3 Qualities ) that what gives modern life its uniqueness in the absence of any sign of singularity 4 5 is the universal ability of men and women to exceed whatever identity they have been 6 7 allotted. In other words, we learn from Musil that ‘universal man can only be a man without 8 9 10 qualities, for a man without qualities is the only one who can possess any quality’ (Jonsson 11 12 2010: 117). That is, whilst there are many ways of becoming-in-the-world, all humans share 13 14 the meaningFor of what it Peermeans to be human—in Review other words all humanOnly beings have the sense 15 16 of an inevitable, universal, relation but with contingency attached to the individual form their 17 18 19 life will take. As Jonnson goes on to explain: 20 21 22 There is a slogan for this mode of universality as negativity: the right to difference. But 23 24 human beings possess no such ‘right’; rather, they practice such difference inseparably 25 26 from their life process. There are situations in which this negativity becomes 27 28 29 politicized, such as when an external power seeks to fix a person or a group in a certain 30 31 identity—as Jews, women, Muslims or youth—thus disavowing their capacity for 32 33 negativity (ibid: 117-118). 34 35 36 Indeed, the satisfaction we find in our leisure is often the satisfaction of finding another 37 38 39 aspect of ourselves, which permits us to be somebody else and this has nothing to do with the 40 41 desire of external powers (such as sociologists) to recognize us ‘for who we really are’. 42 43 44 45 This observation leads to a further troubling aspect of intersectionality. This is the argument 46 47 that despite its adherents’ claims to the contrary, ‘thinking intersectionally’ does a double 48 49 50 disservice to ‘the poor’, by not only being resolutely determined to ‘give voice’ to the 51 52 conditions of the multiplicity of their subjugation, but also by judging ‘them’ as oppressed 53 54 creatures. As Rancière (2004) would say, in the kind of sociology promulgated by the 55 56 intersectionality perspective, there are no ‘thieves’, only ‘the possessors and the disposed’ . 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 44 of 69

10 1 2 3 One of the consequences of this is that in trying to understand leisure through relational and 4 5 multiple dimensions of inequality, the world of the research subjects under scrutiny is always 6 7 bound to remains partial to say the least, and if the intersectionality perspective is one that is 8 9 10 successful in giving voice, the only voices really heard are those of the sociologists. One of 11 12 the other consequences is that ‘thinking intersectionally’ has to nurture with its thought the 13 14 lives of its For‘subjects’; butPeer in so doing it Reviewfails to grasp the fact that Only its monsters cannot be 15 16 tamed by bolting together objectified versions of their existence from intersections that never 17 18 19 quite cohere with one another. The overall effect is so full of its own virtuousness that it gives 20 21 the impression of showing little regard for its respondents, and the arch structuring the 22 23 sociology—with its inability to grasp the existential contingency of the individual lives at 24 25 stake in the commentary—renders the perspective critically inert. As that most discerning 26 27 critic of this social scientific fixation with turning subjectivity into objectivity and converting 28 29 30 people from subjects into objects of investigation, Jacques Derrida once put it, ‘One cannot 31 32 say: ‘Here are our monsters’’, without immediately turning the monsters into pets’ (1990, p. 33 34 80). 35 36 37 38 39 What is perhaps most problematic with ‘thinking intersectionally’, then, is that it ends up 40 41 overstating the significance of the relationship between difference and subjugation. This 42 43 constitutes the limit of a particular sort of sociology, for which true freedom is only that of 44 45 the sociologist, and which is conceivable and functions as the exact opposite of the ostensible 46 47 powerlessness of those who are subjugated. As Rancière would say, here sociology ends up 48 49 50 as the very thought of inequality because by posing social inequality as the primary fact that 51 52 needs to be explained it ends up explaining its necessity. 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 45 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

11 1 2 3 What ‘thinking intersectionally’ also does in this regard is deny the true interpretive role of 4 5 thinking sociologically since its conception of reflexivity (in common with Bourdieu’s), 6 7 foregrounds social inequality at the expense of understanding leisure worlds through the self- 8 9 10 understandings of social agents. Indeed, the awareness of what is lost, overlooked, and 11 12 distorted in the process of transforming people’s everyday worlds into sociology cannot help 13 14 but be missingFor from ‘thinking Peer intersectionally’; Review and what it shares Only in common with 15 16 Bourdieu’s sociology, is the inability to escape the tendency to impose its own narrative order 17 18 19 on all kinds of untidiness—worst of all, the necessities of sociological ‘Theory’ above the 20 21 identification with and compassion for those whose worlds it claims to be explaining—while 22 23 failing miserably to reflect on the process by which that order has been achieved. 24 25 26 27 Rethinking social inequality and its relationship with leisure 28 29 30 31 32 The argument developed so far suggests that in sociological ‘Theory’ ‘the poor’ have to stay 33 34 in their place: on the one hand, they have no time to go anywhere else because work won’t 35 36 wait for them, which is an empirical fact; and on the other, their immovability rests on the 37 38 39 belief that ‘God mixed iron in their makeup while he mixed gold in the makeup of those who 40 41 destined to deal with the common good’ (Rancière 2009, p. 276). This second reason is not 42 43 an empirical fact, but it provides the alchemical myth (‘the story of the deity who mixes gold, 44 45 silver, or iron in the souls’) that underpins the ‘natural’ order of things and which sustains the 46 47 idea that ‘the poor’ have to remain in their assigned places. In other words, in order for 48 49 50 sociology to function it has to rest on the idea that the social divisions and the inequalities 51 52 emanating from these are performed by those who endure them ‘as their life, as what they 53 54 feel, and what they are aware of’ ( ibid ). To use one of Rancière’s analogies, the identity of 55 56 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 46 of 69

12 1 2 3 someone from ‘the ‘must fit like a handmade pair of shoes, but the type of shoe is never in 4 5 question. 6 7 8 9 10 Obviously, Rancière doesn’t think that ‘the poor’ actually believe that God mixed iron in 11 12 their souls and gold in the souls of those higher in the system of social stratification, but it is 13 14 enough thatFor they sense Peerit and as a result Review feel obliged, responsible Only and actively committed to 15 16 this idea as if it were true. In other words, for Rancière, social divisions are not only a 17 18 19 reflection of actually existing conditions of existence, but also the extent to which 20 21 sociologists believe that they are natural and inevitable. In Rancière’s scheme of things 22 23 ‘myth’ and ‘reality’ and ‘activity’ and ‘passivity’ are not opposed; just as a ‘reality’ always 24 25 goes along with ‘myth’, so ‘activity’ always goes along with ‘passivity’. In other words, for 26 27 Rancière, sociologists give their own meaning to the world through the patterns of hierarchy 28 29 30 and order which appear in their ‘Theories’ and which they help to create and sustain. 31 32 33 34 Rancière (2009) argues that what sociologists need to grasp is that actually existing reality 35 36 and the ability to transform it lies not in their theories or their research but in the collective 37 38 39 passion of individuals. What he also argues is that when the status quo of actually existing 40 41 reality is challenged, ‘a break of epistemology as the qualifying perceptual criterion for 42 43 political participation‘ (Panagia 2010, p. 98) takes place, which leads to a demand for a share, 44 45 a place, a part des san-part , in the social order by those who do not have one. To this extent, 46 47 Rancière understands politics as a form of disruption of the established order of things by 48 49 50 those who challenge their own invisibility, silence and unimportance within that order. Here 51 52 Rancière is not talking about the empowerment of a group that already has a subordinated 53 54 part or a place. Rather, that ‘politics is the emergence of a claim to enfranchisement by a 55 56 group that has been so radically excluded that its inclusion demands the transformation of the 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 47 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

13 1 2 3 rules of inclusion’ (Martin 2005, p. 39). What this suggests is that men and women acting 4 5 politically not only demand to be included in the world in ways that have previously not been 6 7 open to them, but that they are also intent on a total transformation of the ways in which they 8 9 10 are seen in this new ‘part’ or role—that is, they are after a radical transformation of 11 12 experience. In other words, in order for them to be included, the world has to be transformed 13 14 to accommodateFor them inPeer different ways Review than it has done previously, Only and in order for the 15 16 world to be transformed, men and women acting politically need to conjure a different world. 17 18 19 This is where often leisure comes in. 20 21 22 23 The essential point I want to make here can be made by briefly discussing some of the 24 25 findings from my study of the ‘Inbetweeners’, the intermediary generation that provide the 26 27 focus of a life history interpretation of working-class life in northern England in the period 28 29 30 after the Second World War (AUTHOR 2013). Amongst other things, this study explores the 31 32 extent to which a generation of working-people found through their leisure interests and 33 34 activities the means to transform a world in which they had hitherto been predisposed to 35 36 remain invisible. As this study shows, through the life course this generation would re- 37 38 39 discover life as unintended and contingent and they would as a result set about re-making 40 41 new worlds in their own image, and discovering also, by extension, that leisure is often 42 43 pivotal to these reconstructions. 44 45 46 47 What the evidence emerging from this study suggests is that when the balance of work and 48 49 50 leisure tilts over from the former to the latter, as it did for many working-people in England 51 52 in the post-war period, the distribution of iron and gold is disturbed. Indeed, by stealing ‘a 53 54 certain sort of gold, a sort of gold which is at once more and less precious than the gold 55 56 which is supposed to be mixed in the soul of the rulers’ (Rancière 2009), the Inbetweeners 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 48 of 69

14 1 2 3 were at the vanguard of the dawn of a new order of things in which leisure moved steadily 4 5 into its position as the principal driving force underpinning the human goal of satisfying its 6 7 hunger for meaning and its thirst for giving life a purpose (AUTHOR 2010). In other words, 8 9 10 what the findings of this study demonstrate is that leisure was key to understanding the 11 12 interruption of a tacitly accepted order of things by working-people who had hitherto been 13 14 invisible inFor it. The result Peer was, as the evidence Review of the study demonstrates, Only in the post-war 15 16 period, that leisure as a certain kind of gold, instead of being out of the reach of most 17 18 19 working-people, began to take up a more central and radical place in their lives. 20 21 22 23 Interim summary 24 25 26 Amongst all the issues that emanate from the cognitive dissonance found in sociological 27 28 leisure studies discussed in the preceding section of this article, the following stand out. First 29 30 and foremost, the prevailing discourse underpinning some orthodox sociological accounts is 31 32 premised upon situating ‘the poor’ in a singular, self-contained leisure world . One of the 33 34 35 upshots of this is (as we saw with intersectionality), while it provides its adherents with a 36 37 vocabulary for analyzing how social inequality in leisure is relational and has multiple 38 39 dimensions, it does this at the expense of understanding that all men and women today— 40 41 notwithstanding whether they are ‘the poor’ or not—inhabit pluralized worlds where there are 42 43 different possibilities for leisure. We also saw that such an outlook can lead to some 44 45 46 sociologists equipping ‘the poor’ with an excess of the most unattractive, but also most 47 48 necessary features of ‘people like them’—features that while purporting to ‘give them voice’ 49 50 actually turn them into monsters, or even worse still, pets, whose leisure interests incite the 51 52 kind of disapproving, puritanical look made universal by the Frankfurt School. 53 54 55 What is also clear from this discussion is that the discursive formation known as the 56 57 58 sociology of leisure has been too insular, too parochial, and too complacent in framing the 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 49 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

15 1 2 3 idea of its subject, and while many of the once bright academics from the 1970s are still 4 5 around, the waves that they make nowadays seem much more modest. Beyond the odd blue- 6 7 moon gem from Rojek, the sociology of leisure seems to have reduced its ambitions to the 8 9 10 shrinking comfort-zone of coterie approval that is its key associations, conferences and 11 12 journals. Moreover, what is hardly debated in leisure studies is that the subject field has lost 13 14 its lustre. TheFor study of Peerleisure has by and Review large dropped off the curriculumOnly at most 15 16 universities and most bright young postgraduates nowadays seem more attracted to subjects 17 18 19 like sport, criminology and cultural studies. The fundamental issue at stake here can be found 20 21 in the failure to incorporate into the sociology of leisure what has happened in social, 22 23 cultural, political and economic life over the last thirty or so years. 24 25 26 27 It is important to qualify something at this point. I am not suggesting for a moment that social 28 29 30 inequality is by now unimportant to leisure studies. That is not my argument. My argument is 31 32 that there is now an unacceptable gap between sociological accounts and quotidian leisure. 33 34 This gap has arisen as a result of the discursive formation’s anxious reluctance to let go of 35 36 the ‘zombie categories’—zombies frighten us by being both dead and alive—associated with 37 38 39 orthodox sociology, which no longer have a compelling grip on reality. What I am talking 40 41 about in this regard are the zombie concepts associated with social inequality which have a 42 43 strange ghost like presence in the sociology of leisure, which still uses them as if they 44 45 represent something, including power; and to some extent they do still represent power. But 46 47 the social networks and patronage, the paddings of privilege and the stereotypes leftover 48 49 50 from modernity in its ‘solid’ phase do not carry the same power that they once did—even if 51 52 sociologists carry on ‘business as usual’. Breaking this spell is a game that sociologists of 53 54 leisure need to play if the discursive formation is to emerge from the current crisis. 55 56 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 50 of 69

16 1 2 3 So how to refresh the sociology of leisure in a way that thinks outside social inequality? The 4 5 first answer to this question must be that the explanations I have given for the decline of 6 7 sociological ‘Theory’ have implications which reach much further than just theory. Indeed, 8 9 10 the whole function of sociology is in question if we can no longer accept that it has the 11 12 authority to either lock individuals (no matter how ostensibly multi-disadvantaged) into a 13 14 single identityFor or to convince Peer us that the Review theoretical world is the Onlyonly horizon from which 15 16 human existence takes its meaning. What this suggests is that the sociology of leisure needs 17 18 19 some new ‘rules of method’. To understand why, we must consider yet another answer. 20 21 22 23 Towards an alternative sociology of leisure 24 25 26 Today we find ourselves living in a society at once strange and yet strangely familiar. It is 27 28 still far from being an equal one, which means that a democratic deficit continues to bedevil 29 30 the leisure opportunities of many. However, with the emergence of what Bauman (2000) calls 31 32 33 ‘liquid modernity’ there has been a shift from a structured and structuring society in which 34 35 our identities were largely predetermined by our social class, gender, ‘race’ and the like, to an 36 37 unstructured and de-structuring one in which individualization dominates more than anything 38 39 else, and where our identities always remain a work in progress. Social class, gender and 40 41 42 ethnicity may still exert some degree of influence on our leisure lives, but they certainly do 43 44 not dictate them. There are many reasons why this is so, but it is still difficult to define this 45 46 change briefly. But what individualization involves, fundamentally, is the change, as 47 48 Raymond Williams once observed, from unaware alignment to active commitment, or in 49 50 other words, the moving of social relationships to human consciousness. Unaware alignment 51 52 53 refers to the kind of life you are born into and stuck with, while active commitment refers to 54 55 the kind of life we make for ourselves because we feel it our duty to do so. And this is 56 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 51 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

17 1 2 3 because all of us—modern men and modern women both rich and poor—are existential 4 5 agents who are very much aware of our social contingency. 6 7 8 The implications of these observations for sociology are profound. In the rest of this article I 9 10 shall develop a thumbnail sketch of an alternative sociology of leisure with certain 11 12 epistemological, ontological and ethical implications. In so doing, my approach differs 13 14 For Peer Review Only 15 noticeably from the doxa of orthodox sociology of leisure, by which I am referring to the 16 17 knowledge it thinks with, but not about. The views that I shall develop below have their point 18 19 of origin in another kind of sociological thinking which begins with the assumption that truth 20 21 is better revealed through essential action rather than ‘Theory’. These views are intimately 22 23 shaped by the work of social philosophers such a Bauman, Heller, Rancière, Rorty and 24 25 26 Sloterdijk, who each stress the ambivalence and social contingency of modern life, and which 27 28 culminates in a way of thinking that reverses a number of assumptions underpinning 29 30 orthodox sociology’s rational theorization of the modern world. 31 32 33 The first merit of this way of thinking is that it abandons the binary oppositions orthodox 34 35 sociology inherited from the Enlightenment tradition. Its second strength, and a considerable 36 37 one, is that it inscribes social theory within modernity by taking it out of the academy and 38 39 40 placing it politically into everyday life (Badiou 2005). Its third virtue is to foreground the 41 42 question of what it means to be human in the modern world. In so doing it frames human life 43 44 as an existential problem. However, contra Heidegger, it stresses ‘becoming’ over ‘being’ 45 46 and the recognition that modern life is irreducibly mutable and heterogeneous. In addition to 47 48 this, it argues that rather than finding ourselves merely ‘being-thrown-in-the-world’, we are 49 50 51 knowledgeable actors who recognize the conditions of own social contingency. The fourth 52 53 virtue of this way of thinking is that it replaces the idea of a singular world as an ontological 54 55 given with the idea that we in fact inhabit pluralized worlds—contingent, shape-shifting, 56 57 fractured, underdesigned and undesignable, fuzzily-hierarchical, imperceptible worlds—in 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 52 of 69

18 1 2 3 which life is lived noch nicht surrounded by possibilities that have not yet been realized, and 4 5 where freedom is considered as our duty. Its fifth distinguishing feature, and perhaps its most 6 7 contentious, is that it brings the idea to sociology that what we understand about the 8 9 10 pluralized worlds in which we find ourselves is only knowable through some kind of story. 11 12 13 Let us look at this fifth feature in some more detail. My way of thinking sociologically 14 For Peer Review Only 15 attempts to fasten the delight we find in the pluralized worlds of liquid modernity (Bauman 16 17 2000) onto new kinds of narrative informed by the kind of passion found in the best works of 18 19 literature and poetry. In other words, in deconstructing binary oppositions—between ‘subject’ 20 21 22 and ‘object’, ‘concept’ and ‘existence’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘action’, and so on—and in the 23 24 absence of ontological certainty, it is my contention that ‘rules of method’ have to be 25 26 assigned on what are essentially aesthetic grounds—on the basis of whose narrative has the 27 28 more attractive language, or the more engaging style. For a second time, I have put forward 29 30 what might appear a somewhat scandalous proposition—though once again for good and 31 32 33 assignable reasons. 34 35 36 Telling stories: sociological hermeneutics and the role of the cultural intermediaries 37 38 39 Let us look at this feature in more detail. Sociology will never be quite equal to the 40 41 complexity and infinite nuance of what takes place in everyday life, but it is impossible to 42 43 think sociologically without arriving at some kind of interpretation, or another. However, and 44 45 to paraphrase what the great Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye (1963, p. 24) in his 46 47 48 Massey Lecture Giants in Time , drawing on Aristotle’s idea of the ‘universal event’, said of 49 50 the work of poets, what we meet in any interpretation is neither ‘real’ nor ‘unreal’: it is the 51 52 product of the educated imagination—if by imagination we mean not, as is sometimes 53 54 thought, the ability to invent, but the ability to disclose that which exists (Berger cited in 55 56 57 Burn, 2009). Thinking sociologically is neither fixed nor definitive. It is, on the contrary, a 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 53 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

19 1 2 3 place of perpetual deliberation, speculation calmed by an awareness of the ‘facts’ that lie 4 5 behind what is often naively called ‘reality’ and the sociological imagination, and which 6 7 makes them one and indivisible. Quite simply, sociologists make a good deal of assumptions 8 9 10 about everyday life and that there is a good deal of truth behind these, and these assumptions 11 12 are as good a place to start as any. 13 14 For Peer Review Only 15 To continue with Frye’s synopsis, sociologists should never try to make any ‘real’ statements 16 17 at all, certainly no particular or specific ones. It is not our job to tell our readers what 18 19 happened , but what happens : not what did take place, but the thing that always does take 20 21 22 place. The biggest charlatans in sociology are the ‘Theorists’; the ones who claim that they 23 24 are telling their readers how things ‘really’ happened’. As Giddens (1974) has convincingly 25 26 argued, the relation between sociology and its subject matter—the two-way process by which 27 28 everyday experience is turned into sociology and sociology is turned into everyday 29 30 experience—has to be understood in terms of a ‘double hermeneutic’. In volunteering 31 32 33 themselves as cultural intermediaries in this way, what sociologists do is demonstrate that 34 35 virtue is better revealed in action rather than ‘Theory’. In so doing they reveal themselves as 36 37 the most honest of sociologists who say ‘This is my interpretation of the world and I’m going 38 39 to try like hell to make you believe that it’s true; all I ask is that you suspend your own 40 41 42 ontological assumptions for a little while until I have told you my story’. 43 44 45 In other words, sociologists as cultural intermediaries challenge their readers to engage in 46 47 what Rorty (2007) calls ‘cultural politics’: the beginning of a conversation about what words 48 49 to use to create a better vision of the society we want to live in. What this tells us is that 50 51 rather than trust sociological ‘Theory’; we should trust sociologists’ stories instead. This is 52 53 54 because sociology conducted under the auspices of cultural politics can only be good or bad 55 56 in its own categorization. Sociologists as cultural intermediaries know what they are 57 58 presenting us with is both a superior and an inferior world than the one we usually live with, 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 54 of 69

20 1 2 3 but what they demand is that we keep looking steadily at them both. In this way of thinking 4 5 sociologically, no idea of reality is final and no interpretation, however good, is going to 6 7 pronounce some final absolute truth. Every new interpretation, every new formulation 8 9 10 emerging from this or that interpretation has the potential to change our understanding. 11 12 13 In anticipation of my critics, I am acutely aware that, as the eminent philosopher R.G. 14 For Peer Review Only 15 Collingwood (1994) famously pointed out, the work of the scholar is constrained by two 16 17 important issues that need not concern the novelist or the poet. First, its narrative must be 18 19 localized in a time and space that has actually existed; and, second, it must be allied to 20 21 22 evidence which the scholar has gathered from reliable sources. In other words, as 23 24 sociologists, we do not have the freedom of the novelist or the poet; we are constrained by the 25 26 evidence. 27 28 29 Walter Benjamin, a scholar who occupied the opposite pole on the continuum on which the 30 31 rather conservative Collingwood’s views could be plotted, offered a more radical solution. To 32 33 scholars who wish capture the lives and times of any era, Benjamin (1974) suggested, they 34 35 36 should develop a ‘procedure of empathy’ by turning to the period in question in order to 37 38 redeem its sufferings. Benjamin’s invocation gives a crucial role to developing solidarity with 39 40 the worlds of those whose lives we seek to understand. This concern is captured succinctly by 41 42 Brewer’s (2010) practice of ‘refuge history’ whose ‘procedure of empathy’ forms the basis of 43 44 45 the ‘rules of method’ underpinning the aforementioned book TITLE . As Brewer explains, 46 47 ‘refuge history’ 48 49 50 is close-up and on the small scale. Its emphasis is on a singular place rather than space, 51 52 the careful delineation of particularities and details, a degree of enclosure....Within the 53 54 55 space of refuge historical figures are actors and have agency, motives, feeling and 56 57 consciousness. They are the subjects not objects of history. The emphasis is on forms of 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 55 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

21 1 2 3 interdependence, on interiority and intimacy rather than surface and distance. The 4 5 pleasures of refuge history derive not from a sense of control of history but from a 6 7 sense of belonging, of connectedness—to both persons and details—in the past. 8 9 10 Whether as the expression of a certain common humanity or as an identification with a 11 12 particular group, this sort of history sees sympathy and understanding—a measure of 13 14 identificationFor which Peer can range from Review the quite abstract to theOnly deeply emotive—as 15 16 essential to historical knowledge and insight. Refuge history is therefore… Heimlich 17 18 19 (2010, p. 89). 20 21 22 Trying to understand different worlds with different rules demands a special kind of 23 24 sociological inquiry. This is the kind of inquiry that takes into account the objective features 25 26 of the world while contemplating real-life situations—research respondents’ inner and outer 27 28 29 worlds—by accounting for their personal priorities and relationships with others. There are 30 31 two other important building blocks to this kind of inquiry. First it begins with the 32 33 assumption that the human ‘becoming-in-the-world’ is knit together with its own sense of 34 35 security and comfort—with feeling just right—and second that every world has its own sense 36 37 of morality—its inhabitants living life in a way that they deem right. 38 39 40 41 Thinking with feeling: how to make the sociology of leisure heimleich 42 43 44 These insights form of the basis of my own sociological ‘rules of method’, which demand 45 46 that if we should seek to record the leisure lives of our research respondents accurately, we 47 48 49 must also aim at getting into the evidence of how and in what ways they experience leisure 50 51 and its social meaning for them, as well as something of its disorderly continuity— often 52 53 invisible, but all the more consequential for being so—which makes life palpable, and in 54 55 some cases, bearable. To paraphrase Foucault (1970, p. xi), the purpose of researching 56 57 58 leisure heimleich is to try to restore what usually eludes the consciousness of the sociological 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 56 of 69

22 1 2 3 imagination, which is looking at a milieu and its people from the inside and trying to feel 4 5 what it feels, what they feel. 6 7 8 One of my key concerns in the aforementioned book is to explore and evoke the emotional 9 10 contours of my respondents’ collective history. In other words, to paraphrase Nora, it is 11 12 13 concerned with what wells up from this generation that memory has welded together (1996, 14 For Peer Review Only 15 p. 3). In developing this study, I inhabited a realm between the past and the present, moving 16 17 back- and-forth, in dialogue, constructing a narrative as an interpretive device made between 18 19 me and my respondents. The study works with the assumption that reality cannot be 20 21 22 reproduced in history, but the concentrated act of reproducing some of reality’s dynamics 23 24 can, of turning history into an essential action—even if the best it can hope to achieve is 25 26 make the world it renders in its pages feel human and not merely academic machination. In 27 28 other words, refuge history—understood here as the empathetic study of what Hegel called 29 30 ‘absolute spirit home-experience’ (Heller 2011) and the narrative that moves it—is the 31 32 33 domain par excellence of sociological hermeneutics. 34 35 36 Sociological hermeneutics is reminiscent of what Foucault termed a ‘general’ history (as 37 38 opposed to a ‘total’ history). Whereas a ‘total’ history draws its resources around a single 39 40 unifying centre—‘a principle, a meaning, a spirit, a worldview, an overall shape’; a ‘general’ 41 42 history, deploys ‘the space of a dispersion’ (1972, p. 10). Foucault’s critical method 43 44 45 recognizes that all historical (and sociological) accounts are embedded in, and concerned 46 47 with, the exercise of power-knowledge. This critical awareness informs the study in question 48 49 in the sense that it deploys its own ‘space of a dispersion’ in the gap between what is 50 51 necessarily present and unnecessarily absent in the individual and collective memories of the 52 53 54 Inbetweeners. What this tells the reader of the book is that between the past and memory 55 56 there is something else at stake that it much more important than ensuring reliability and 57 58 representativeness. This is that interpretation itself is a moral issue: subject and object, the 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 57 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

23 1 2 3 counterfactual and the ‘factual’, the necessary and the contingent, and so on, are 4 5 intermingled; in this study, contraries always come together. 6 7 8 Metaphoricity and pictorial thinking 9 10 11 And yet, whether we are always conscious of the fact or not, we scholars—historians or 12 13 sociologists or whoever, depending on our education or individual taste or contingent 14 For Peer Review Only 15 16 encounters (or more often than not, I suspect, all three of these), will have been captivated by 17 18 certain theories, certain ideas. From these ideas we derive the framework of our own 19 20 intuitions, the underpinning convictions that form our own scholarship. Many of the shaping 21 22 beliefs (of which I am conscious) that underpin my own scholarship are located in the 23 24 25 sociology of Zygmunt Bauman—especially his ideas of ‘solid’ modernity and ‘liquid’ 26 27 modernity—which attests that as the world alters, we need the right vocabulary with which to 28 29 interpret it. 30 31 32 It is my view that Bauman sets the agenda for sociology today: for what we think 33 34 sociologically about when it comes to the modern world. Bauman came up with his own 35 36 37 narrative voice that allows him to interpret modernity in a special way. Writing the modern 38 39 world as ‘solid’ versus ‘liquid’ is the creation of two discrete modern experiences in 40 41 themselves on the page. The way the reader knows that Bauman has found the right narrative 42 43 voices for those experiences is because the sociology gives you access to those two 44 45 experiences—the felt life—that is those two opposing versions of modernity in themselves. 46 47 48 Used in the way that Bauman uses them, the metaphors of ‘solidity’ and ‘liquidity’ are 49 50 51 intellectual devices, not ‘things’ in the world (Beilharz 2010). In other words, Bauman 52 53 constructs the world as ‘ideal typical’ meaning ( ideal types are not descriptions of reality, but 54 55 analytical tools sociologists use to try to understand it). This enables him (and us) to see the 56 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 58 of 69

24 1 2 3 modern world through ‘solid’ and ‘liquid’ representations that he has imaginatively posed on 4 5 it by using these ‘ideal types’. 6 7 8 The juxtaposition of ‘solidity and ‘liquidity’ offers sociologists a fresh way of thinking about 9 10 leisure. This is a way of thinking that does not depend on ‘Theory’, but rather on metaphor, 11 12 13 which is the rhetorical tool that enables us to ‘defamiliarize the familiar’ and show it in a new 14 For Peer Review Only 15 light (Bauman 1990). Metaphor is that part of language that enables us to practice 16 17 hermeneutics. That is, on the one hand, to make meaning i.e. make intelligible that which 18 19 could not otherwise be grasped, and on the other, to deepen our understanding so as to make 20 21 22 meaning even more meaningful, in the process creating some democratic operating principles 23 24 as we go along. Seen in this way, Bauman presents us with some intellectual devices which 25 26 signal the continuation the sociological imagination by an alternative means, which retrains it 27 28 into looking for both similarities and contradictions, in other words, the ambivalence of what 29 30 we casually call ‘reality’, and to see significance and meaning in unexpected places. 31 32 33 This metaphorical reconstruction of modernity, as Bauman conceives it, is by no means a 34 35 36 simple replacement of ‘solid’ modern by ‘liquid’ modern considerations: on the contrary, the 37 38 central tenet of Bauman’s sociology is the need to exhort critical analysis to constant 39 40 juxtaposition. Bauman recognizes that thinking is unsurpassed when we juxtapose, when we 41 42 recognize the value of bringing opposites together, when we realize that two 'realities', one 43 44 45 posed next to the other, are in one way or another connected. 46 47 48 As the Wittgenstein scholar, Peter Hacker (2010), points out, questions about ‘what it is like 49 50 to be something?’ require contrasts in order to make sense. What is it like for a person born 51 52 into the working class to experience leisure? This is not a good question. For Hacker, critical 53 54 inquiry is dialogical in spirit. In other words, we should turn our attention to what two 55 56 57 things—in the case my study TITLE (2003), the certain solid modernity and the unpredictable 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 59 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

25 1 2 3 liquid modernity—might say about each other. What is it like for a person born into a solid, 4 5 seemingly permanent, immutable modernity to find themselves in a liquid modern world? 6 7 This is a perfectly good question. In other words, following Wittgenstein’s emphasis on 8 9 10 seeing things differently and the associated notions of pictorial thinking through ‘family 11 12 resemblances’, there is a requirement that there be a juxtaposition, and once there is all sorts 13 14 of stories areFor likely to follow.Peer From this Review shuttling between ‘solid’ Only and ‘liquid’—concepts as 15 16 magic wands in and of themselves which illuminate, with an almost miraculous precision, our 17 18 19 way of thinking by maximizing contrast—it is my argument that it is possible to weave a 20 21 larger fabric, a sustained deliberation on some key themes, to be precise, a picture of the 22 23 always unrestful modernity. 24 25 26 Indisciplinarity 27 28 29 What the foregoing discussion tells us if nothing else is that every study is, in part, a 30 31 reflection of its author and his putative assumptions. This is not to say that I cannot look at 32 33 the world other than through the spectacles fitted for me by Zygmunt Bauman. Bauman’s 34 35 36 sense of sociology, as he once told me, is that it is like a sponge, a creature porous in texture 37 38 and of uncertain outline, whose hollows embody countless visiting ideas which swim and 39 40 often stay to breed. Sociology will never be an academic discipline sure of itself, capable of 41 42 making authoritative statements or offering definitive answers. It will always be, for better or 43 44 45 worse, tentative in its deliberations. What this also tells us is that thinking sociologically 46 47 should never be content with any one way of making sense of the world, nor should it rest 48 49 content that there is any one discipline best placed to make sense of it. 50 51 52 Steering a course between different perspectives, my own approach develops its own 53 54 hermeneutics of ‘undecidability’ that offers a principle of convergence that we extend beyond 55 56 57 sociology, history, philosophy and all the rest into the world of culture and our knowledge of 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 60 of 69

26 1 2 3 it, the world of Kulturwissenschaft . What this tells the reader is that my approach attempts to 4 5 account for individuals and their worlds by operating on an indisciplinary basis (Rancière 6 7 2008), which is not only a matter of going above and beyond the call of duty of sociology as 8 9 10 we normally understand it, but also breaking with it. Whereas interdisciplinarity merely 11 12 signals a combination of approaches drawn from various disciplines, indisciplinarity moves 13 14 outside boundaries,For setting Peer itself free byReview subordinating the false Onlydivisions between sociology, 15 16 psychology, geography, philosophy and so on, to the sociological imagination, which affects 17 18 19 the whole person rather than just training the mind, bringing with it moral development that 20 21 leads to the discovery that the imaginative world and the world around us are different 22 23 worlds, and that the imaginative world is more important (Frye 1963). 24 25 26 Conclusions 27 28 29 What these last observations attest is not only that all those awakened to rethinking 30 31 32 sociologically anew must be aware that ethical questions are today more difficult (Sloterdijk 33 34 2013, p. 90), but also that sociological theory means something different. As it rose from its 35 36 death it developed some ‘new rules of method’ which, following Wittgenstein’s emphasis on 37 38 seeing things differently and the associated notions of pictorial thinking through ‘family 39 40 resemblances’, abandons theorizing altogether. In other words, after ‘Theory’, narrative— 41 42 43 another expression for story-telling, as says Sloterdijk (2013, p. 11), bent on the ‘musical- 44 45 rhapsodic transmission of knowledge rather than the ‘prosaic-communicative procurement of 46 47 knowledge’—was now resurrected as a viable alternative to ‘Theory’, and not just as 48 49 intelligent but better made to the measure of the contemporary world. This ‘new’ method not 50 51 52 only entailed taking ‘Theory’ out of the academy and placing it politically into everyday life. 53 54 It was also to become a way of explaining social life that is on the one hand ‘indisciplinary’ 55 56 and on the other content to rely on interpretations drawn from metaphors (and by default 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 61 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

27 1 2 3 other tropes drawn from literature and poetry), rather than depending on facts or being fixated 4 5 with establishing grand ‘Theory’. 6 7 8 Those who use pictorial thinking through ‘language games’ argue two things: firstly, that it is 9 10 a different way of thinking that recognizes that as worlds alter, we need new vocabularies 11 12 13 with which to interpret them, and secondly, that sociologically there are many different 14 For Peer Review Only 15 stories that we can tell and re-tell. What these stories do not do is try to conceptualize the 16 17 worlds under scrutiny through the rules of logic. What they do, instead, is literalize 18 19 metaphor. This is what makes pictorial thinking valuable. It alerts us to what abstract 20 21 22 conceptual thinking cannot: those stubbornly universal human dilemmas—questions to 23 24 which sociologists have found few compelling answers—which have never vanished from 25 26 life. The hallmark of this ‘rule of method’, then, is that it recurs perennially as our 27 28 understandings are revised and revivified as society and culture shift and change. 29 30 31 As we have also seen, the practice of pointing out the questionable epistemological grounds 32 33 which form the basis of orthodox sociological ‘Theory’, while simultaneously asking ones 34 35 36 readers to temporarily suspend their own ontological assumptions, is one of the most 37 38 distinctive features of this reflexive approach. Some readers will no doubt find the 39 40 combination of outspoken epistemological criticism and deferred ontological judgement 41 42 troubling. Others will be equally unhappy about accepting such a frankly novelizing 43 44 45 methodological approach, especially when it is applied to certain aspects of abnormal leisure 46 47 (Rojek 2005; 2013), for example. However, the disorderly continuity of modern life is 48 49 infinitely less predictable and more strangely ambiguous than any sociological theory would 50 51 suggest. Sociologists must face up to the fact that each and every one of them is standing in a 52 53 54 moral quagmire as they try to illuminate the lived (leisure) life through their different stories. 55 56 As such, to paraphrase Sloterdijk, we must recognize that as sociologists we must be prepared 57 58 to be challenged where our own tacit assumptions are interrogated. When there is no solid 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 62 of 69

28 1 2 3 ground under the sociological enterprise, no basis for moral certainty, the truth is that the 4 5 only other way the authority of any work can be enhanced is through the acknowledgment of 6 7 its predispositions. 8 9 10 11 12 The effects of social inequality, we can agree, continue, and always will be important for 13 14 understandingFor leisure. InPeer this regard we Review have learned from Giddens, Only the two-way process by 15 16 which everyday experience is turned into sociology and sociology is turned into everyday 17 18 19 experience should always be promoted by sociologists as a democratic activity. Any 20 21 sociologist intent on revealing the effects of social inequality on leisure must try to ensure 22 23 that they are showing us both of these things. There is no one theory or ‘rule of method’ in 24 25 this regard; the genuinely reflexive sociologist will write these the way that they must write 26 27 them. In the most compelling stories the writing will be clear and the ideas will be based on 28 29 30 things seen by the sociologist and spoken about by their research respondents rather than on 31 32 what they think as a professional sociologist and is excited to think they now understand it 33 34 all. 35 36 37 38 39 This finally brings me to the sixth, and final, feature of my ‘new rules of method’. This is the 40 41 admonition to all sociologists that they must complicate their stories by questioning what it is 42 43 possible for them as researchers, or anyone else for that matter, to finally ‘know’ about other 44 45 people. It is all too easy to feel and to theorize people less fortunate than yourself (also 46 47 known as ‘the poor’) as part of a mass—or any other kind of social grouping vulnerable to 48 49 50 political manipulation. It is also all too easy to disapprove of what that mass do in their 51 52 leisure. But that kind of feeling and theorizing is as foolish as the disapproving is 53 54 reprehensible. To put some additional gloss on James’ (2009, p. 9) perceptive observations, 55 56 the mass are us : a multitude of individuals. They just happen to be leading less fortunate 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 63 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

29 1 2 3 lives. Any sociologist who speaks about social justice from their privileged position will not 4 5 be able to do so in any compelling ways unless they can dispel the disapproving, puritanical 6 7 attitude that often pervades sociology. In order to do this, they will not only have to replace 8 9 10 this attitude with compassion—as Paul Taylor (2009) observed, identifying with those less 11 12 privileged than yourself is not enough, you need to really feel their plight: ‘to identify is 13 14 merely to loveFor one's neighbour Peer as oneself; Review to empathise is to love Only one's neighbour for himself 15 16 or herself’—but just as importantly recognize that their own fortune begins with their own 17 18 19 freedom. 20 21 22 23 What I have argued in a nutshell in this article is that, to paraphrase Bauman (1989), if 24 25 sociology is going to claim the right to speak with authority about leisure in the twenty-first 26 27 century, it is going to have to update its conceptual, empirical and normative understandings 28 29 30 of leisure. Currently it presents us with only a two-dimensional understanding of leisure 31 32 inherited from the dichotomous thinking that underpins the Enlightenment tradition. We need 33 34 a third dimension. What I have offered in the second part of the foregoing discussion is an 35 36 alternative way of thinking sociologically that gives us this dimension. This is the path 37 38 39 forward for the sociology of leisure. Bauman, Heller, Rancière, Rorty and Sloterdijk have led 40 41 the way. Given the resources of their scholarship, there is no reason not to follow. 42 43 44 45 46 Notes on contributor 47 48 49 References 50 51 52 Badiou, A. 2005. The adventure of French philosophy. New Left Review 35 53 54 September/October: 67-76. 55 56 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 64 of 69

30 1 2 3 Bauman, Z. 1989. Hermeneutics and modern social theory. In D. Held and J. B. Thompson 4 5 (Eds.) Social theory of modern societies: Anthony Giddens and his critics . Cambridge, 6 7 Cambridge University Press. 8 9 10 11 12 Bauman, Z. 2000. Liquid modernity . Cambridge, Polity Press. 13 14 For Peer Review Only 15 16 Beilharz, P. 2010. Zygmunt Bauman (1925—). In J. Simons (Ed.) From Agamben to Žižek: 17 18 19 Contemporary critical theorists . Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press. 20 21 22 23 Benjamin, W. 1974. On the concept of history. Gesammelten Schriften I:2 . Translated by 24 25 Dennis Redmond 8/4/01 . Frankfurt am Main , Suhrkamp, Verlag. 26 27 28 29 30 AUTHOR, T. 2003. 31 32 33 34 AUTHOR, T. and T. AUTHOR. 2004. 35 36 37 AUTHOR, T. 2013. 38 39 40 41 Bourdieu, P. 1984. Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste . London, Routledge. 42 43 44 Bourdieu, P. et al. 1999. The weight of the world: Social suffering in Contemporary society . 45 46 Cambridge: Polity Press. 47 48 49 Brewer, J. 2010. Microhistory and the histories of everyday life. Centre for Advanced 50 51 52 Studies . Ludwig-Maximilians- UniversitätMünchen: E-Series Number 5. 53 54 www.cas.lmu.de/publikationen/eseries. 55 56 th 57 Burn, G. 2009. Have I broken your hear. Guardian Review 7 March. 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 65 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

31 1 2 3 4 5 Caudwell, J. and Brown, K. 2011. Sexy spaces; geography and leisure intersectionalities. 6 7 Leisure Studies 30, no. 2: 117-122. 8 9 10 11 12 Clarke, J. and Critcher, C. 1985. The devil makes work for idle hands: Leisure in capitalist 13 14 Britain . Basingstoke,For Macmillan.Peer Review Only 15 16 17 18 19 Collingwood, R.G. 1994. The idea of history. Revised edition with lectures 1926-1928 . (edited 20 21 by Jan van Der Dussen) Oxford, Clarendon Press [1946]. 22 23 24 25 Davis, C. 2013. Foreword: Analyzing philosophy’s temperamental symptom. In P. Sloterdijk. 26 27 Philosophical temperaments: From Plato to Foucault . Translated by Thomas 28 29 30 Dunlap/Foreword by Creston Davis. New York, Columbia University Press. 31 32 33 Derrida, J. 1990. Some statements etc. Stanford, Stanford University Press. 34 35 36 37 Dumazadier, J. 1974. The sociology of leisure . Amsterdam, Elsevier. 38 39 40 41 42 Elias, N. and Dunning, E. 1969. The quest for excitement in leisure. Society and Leisure 2 43 44 December: 50-85. 45 46 47 48 Foucault, M. 1970. The order of things: the archaeology of the human sciences. New York, 49 50 Vintage. 51 52 53 54 55 Foucault, M. 1972. The archaeology of knowledge . London, Tavistock. 56 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 66 of 69

32 1 2 3 Frye, N. 1963. The educated imagination . Toronto, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. 4 5 6 7 Giddens, A. 1974. New rules of sociological method . London, Hutchinson. 8 9 10 11 12 de Grazia, S. 1964. Of time, work, and leisure . New York, Anchor Books, Doubleday and 13 14 Company, ForInc. Peer Review Only 15 16 17 18 19 Gramsci, A. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Translated and edited by Quintin 20 21 Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith. New York, International Publishers. 22 23 24 25 Habermas, J. 1975. Legitimation Crisis . Trans. and with an introduction by Thomas 26 27 McCarthy. Boston, Beacon Press. 28 29 30 31 32 Hacker, P. 2010. In J. Garvey, Interview with Peter Hacker, The Philosopher’s Magazine 51, 33 34 25 th October. 35 36 37 38 39 Harris, D. 2005. Key concepts in leisure studies . London, Sage. 40 41 42 Heller, A. 2011. Where are we at home? In J. Rundell (Ed.) Aesthetics and Modernity: Essays 43 44 45 by Agnes Heller . Plymouth, Lexington Books. 46 47 48 49 Henderson, K. A. 2013. Feminist leisure studies: Origins, accomplishments and prospects. In 50 51 T. AUTHOR (Ed.) The Routledge handbook of leisure studies . London and New York, 52 53 54 Routledge. 55 56 57 James, C. 2009. The revolt of the pendulum: Essays 2005-2008 . London, Picador. 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 67 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

33 1 2 3 Jarvie, G. and Maguire, J. 1994. Sport and leisure in social thought . London, Routledge. 4 5 6 7 8 Jonsson, S. 2010. The ideology of universalism. New left review 63 May/June: 115-126. 9 10 11 Martin, S. 2005. Culs-de-sac, review of The politics of aesthetics: The distribution of the 12 13 sensible , Radical Philosophy 131 May/June 39-44. 14 For Peer Review Only 15 16 Kelly, J. R. 1978. A revise paradigm of leisure choices. Leisure Sciences 1: 345-363. 17 18 19 Kelly, J. R. 1983. Leisure identities and interactions . London, Allen and Unwin. 20 21 22 Nora, P. 1996. General introduction: Between memory and history. In P. Nora. Realms of 23 24 25 memory: Rethinking the french past. 1. conflicts and divisions . Columbia, Columbia 26 27 University Press. 28 29 30 Panagia, D. 2010. Partage du sensible: the distribution of the sensible. In J-P Deranty (Ed.) 31 32 Jacques Rancière: Key concepts . Durham, Acumen. 33 34 35 Parker, S. 1971. The future of work and leisure . London, MacGibbon Kee. 36 37 38 Parker, S. 1983. Leisure and Work . London, Allen and Unwin. 39 40 41 Rancière, J. 2004. The philosopher and his poor . Translated by John Drury, Corinne Oster 42 43 and Andrew Parker. Durham and London, Duke University Press. 44 45 46 Rancière, J. 2005. The politics of aesthetics: The distribution of the sensible . Translated by 47 48 49 Gabriel Rockhill. London, Continuum. 50 51 52 Rancière, J. 2008. ‘Jacques Rancière and indisciplinarity: an interview with Marie-Aude 53 54 Baronian and Mireille Rosello. Posted on Void Manufacturing , 15 th October. 55 56 http://voidmanufacturing.wordpress.com/2008/10/15/jacques-ranciere-interview-2007/ 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Annals of Leisure Research Page 68 of 69

34 1 2 3 Rancière, J. 2009. Afterword/The method of equality: An answer to some questions. In G. 4 5 Rockhill and P. Watts (Eds.) Jacques Rancière: history, politics, aesthetics . Durham and 6 7 London, Duke University Press. 8 9 10 Roberts, K.1978. Contemporary society and the growth of leisure . London, Longman. 11 12 13 Roberts, K.1981. Leisure . Second edition. London, Longman. 14 For Peer Review Only 15 16 17 Rojek, C. 1985. Capitalism and leisure theory . London and New York, Tavistock 18 19 Publications. 20 21 22 Rojek, C. 1995. Decentring leisure: Rethinking leisure theory . London, Sage. 23 24 25 Rojek, C. 2000. Leisure and culture . Basingstoke, Macmillan. 26 27 28 Rojek, C. 2005. Leisure theory: principles and practice . Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan. 29 30 31 Rojek, C. 2010. The labour of leisure: The culture of free time. London, Sage. 32 33 34 Rojek, C. 2013. Abnormal leisure and normalization. In T. AUTHOR (Ed.) The Routledge 35 36 handbook of leisure studies . London and New York, Routledge. 37 38 39 Rorty, R. 2007 . Philosophy as cultural politics: Philosophical papers volume 4 . Cambridge, 40 41 Cambridge University Press. 42 43 44 Sloterdijk, P. 2013. Philosophical temperaments: From Plato to Foucault . Translated by 45 46 47 Thomas Dunlap/Foreword by Creston Davis. New York, Columbia University Press. 48 49 50 Swenson, J. 2006. Jacques Rancière. In L. D. Kritzman (Ed.) The Columbia history of 51 52 twentieth-century French thought. New York, Columbia University Press. 53 54 55 Taylor, P. 2009. A very English playwright: The return of Alan Bennett. Independent Review, 56 57 6th November. 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected] Page 69 of 69 Annals of Leisure Research

35 1 2 3 Watson, B. and Ratna, A. 2011. Bollywood in the park: Thinking intersectionally about 4 5 public leisure space. Leisure/Loisir 35, no. 1: 71-86. 6 7 8 Watson, B. and Scraton, S. J. 2013. Leisure studies and intersectionality. Leisure Studies 32, 9 10 no. 1: 35-47. 11 12 13

14 i For Peer Review Only 15 My use of the term ‘the poor’ here is Rancière’s which works with the assumption that the 16 history of Western thought is one in which freedom and the right to think are premised on 17 situating and excluding those whose social role is perceived other than to think. In applying 18 the term in this way I am also using it as a shorthand to include all those social groups who 19 are in one way or another subjugated and/or excluded. 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ranz Email: [email protected]